Hermione Granger and the Tesseract of Merlin
by Writingathing
Summary: (HPMOR spoilers.) HePMORmione Granger wakes up in hell and decides to leave. Somewhere in the mists of Scottish purgatory she meets an unusual society of witches and wizards, each with their own dark secrets and unusual powers, united by only one thing: their mutual desire to pulverize evil. They are the Society to Pulverize Evil Witches and Wizards. And Hermione wants in.
1. Hermione in Hell

She couldn't feel her legs. But she couldn't breathe either, so the legs didn't seem to matter so much.

She coughed. It tasted like blood. Did coughing always taste like that? She would have to ask Harry if he had any theories. He was there when she turned her head, looking remarkably calm, all things considered.

"I'll fix this," he was saying. "I made a mistake, but I can fix this."

What was he talking about? Her legs were asleep. She must have been sitting in the library for too long. Her mouth tasted funny. She needed to brush her teeth. "Not your fault," she tried to say, but it came out wrong. She couldn't move her mouth right. Why couldn't she move her mouth right?

"Not your fault," she said. This time she said it right. Then everything went black, and it didn't seem to matter any more.

* * *

She couldn't feel her legs. She pushed and pushed until a black cat jumped off the end of the bed with a hiss.

"Oh…Crookshanks," she gasped, sweating under the heavy blanket. Wait…who was Crookshanks? Since when did she own a cat? It must belong to one of the other Ravenclaw girls. She'd…ask Harry to find out whose it was.

Hermione checked the time. An hour early to wake, but there was nothing wrong with that. Harry had given her some more books this week. He seemed very excited about one in particular, something about a painter, a composer and a mathematician. It sounded like a bad joke. An hour ought to be enough to read it front to back.

Hermione rummaged around inside her trunk. Her books weren't where she remembered putting them. They didn't feel they way she remembered them.

Hermione pulled out her wand. "Lumos."

She stared.

No _Advanced Spellcrafting_. No _The Logic of Quidditch_. No _The Double Helix_ or _Pale Blue Dot_ or _Man: The Moral Animal_—Harry had given her that one after their…talk in the library.

Instead she had _The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1_. _Magical Drafts and Potions_. _Test-Taking Tips and Tricks for Young Witches._

Hermione grabbed that one and held it up, disbelieving. She didn't need test-taking tips! Step one was memorize everything, and step two was write it down! Who needed _tips_? What was this doing in her trunk? Where were her real books?

Stop. Breathe. It's only b—it's only b-b-books. She made herself say it three times. Harry had played a prank on her, that's all. Probably he was trying to take her mind off things. She'd get him back at breakfast.

* * *

Harry wasn't there at breakfast. She looked up and down the Ravenclaw table, but Harry wasn't there. Who would she eat with now? The thought terrified her. All the Ravenclaw students were looking at her as if she didn't belong, as if it took _temerity_ for her to be trying to sit at their table. Part of her wanted to set her tray down right in the middle of them as loudly as she could. A bigger part of her wanted to drop the tray and run out of the room as fast as she could.

She turned around, unable to stop herself, and she saw him sitting next to Ron Weasley. _Laughing_. At the _Gryffindor_ table.

That did it. Hermione marched over and slapped her tray down on the table in front of him. Gryffindor first-years cleared out of her way as she glared at the Boy Who Lived. They could see in her eyes that she was ready to turn his title into a misnomer.

"Hey, Hermione," he smiled nervously. "I was wondering what you were doing over by the Ravenclaw table—"

"The real question, Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, is what you are doing at the Gryffindor table. Also, my books. Give them back. Now."

He blinked. "There are like five different things in that sentence I didn't understand."

"Do not waste my time, Mr. Potter-Evans-Verres, or I will hex you."

"Hermione, sit down," Ron said around a mouthful of crisps."Relax, it's breakfast. Don't start being crazy until classes, okay?"

She glared at him. "Right, I forgot you're talking to me again now that you think I—I—_why do you have crisps_? Are there even wizard crisps?"

Ron glanced at Harry. "There, uh, aren't, actually. My dad gets them. He sent me a box." He held out the bag. "Funyun?"

"No. Harry, what is going on?"

"I don't know," he said, giving her an odd look. "What _is_ going on?"

Someone rapped on the table. "Hermione's being crazy again."

"Hermione's being crazy again." The call went up and down the table.

"Just sit down," Harry started to say, but she pushed the tray away and ran out of the hall.

* * *

It had been more than an hour reading in the library before Hermione realized she was waiting for Harry to find her. That was silly. Besides, she was missing class…not that she hadn't memorized the textbooks months ago.

What had Harry been thinking? Sitting with Ron at the Gryffindor table? Acting like she was the one being weird? Messing with her _books_? Was it all some sick attempt to distract her from…she was _still_ waiting for him to come find her. Seriously, it made her want to reestablish SPHEW just to pull herself out of this chair and away from this book and go do something.

And she was still waiting here! What was wrong with her? She forced her feet to move—it was like pulling a heavy log through treacle, honestly—and went in search of Harry Potter.

She didn't find him. Instead, she found Draco Malfoy.

She pressed herself against the wall, breathing heavily. Something about that sneer stretched across his face didn't quite seem like him.

She peeked around the corner again. It was hard to tell if it was Draco through the haze. She couldn't quite seem to see clearly, maybe because she needed to vomit. Trembling, she picked herself up off the floor and dashed to the nearest restroom.

She banged on the first stall, but it was locked. She threw open the second one and fell to her knees in front of the toilet. Convulsions wracked her, and on the third heave a breakfast she hadn't eaten came out in a painful retch.

The vomit Vanished immediately. Hermione held on to the toilet seat and waited for the ground to stabilize.

She didn't react as the stall next to her opened. There was no flushing, of course, as everything was Vanished immediately. It was one of six hundred and forty-five facts Hermione remembered from _1000 Facts Every Muggleborn Should Know_. The title had been a lie.

"What's the matter, firstie? Trying to get out of an exam? First time on a broomstick?" The voice didn't sound sympathetic.

Hermione spat. It tasted acidic and foul.

"Smells awful," the girl said. "_Afeteus_. Much better. Try to keep in all in the toilet so that it Vanishes properly. Wouldn't want the house-elves to bake your puke into tomorrow's breakfast, would we?"

The girl left. Hermione spat again.

* * *

Hermione knew exactly when she realized she was in Bizarro Hogwarts. It wasn't the fact that everyone seemed to have forgotten about the armies or the way everyone acted like Neville being sorted into Gryffindor made perfect sense. It was when she walked into Professor Quirrell's Battle Magic class that it finally clicked.

It was odd, thinking of Professor Quirrell as a bedrock of sanity, her last hope to cling to when all else had failed her. But there it was: no matter what Harry had done, no matter how weird the other students or Hogwarts itself was, Professor Quirrell could be relied upon to be precise, direct, and utterly fatalistic. There was no more chance of Professor Quirrell being involved in Harry's over-the-top prank than there was of him gluing students to the ceiling. She had been looking forward to Battle Magic all week. That was probably why it hurt the most to see what had happened to it.

No longer was Professor Quirrell's classroom a giant assemble of all the first-years, but only the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws together. Professor Quirrell came in, trembling and smelling of garlic. The whole room smelled of garlic, and mirrors and holy signs covered the walls. It made for a garish sight, but it wasn't as bad as Quirrell's awful turban that stank of death even over the thick nauseating garlic.

"P-P-Please open your b-b-books to p-p-page 113," Quirrell stuttered, looking terrified that the first-year students were mostly listening to him. "Let's s-s-see what the M-M-Ministry has to say about d-d-defense against wereb-b-bunnies."

Hermione's mouth dropped. It was happening so much she was starting to worry some kind of locking mechanism in her jaw had broken.

Lavender Brown raised her hand. "Pick up, stick in cage until transformation wears off," she read dutifully.

"W-Well done. I h-have here a number of bunnies—not w-w-werebunnies, of c-c-course, just regular b-b-bunnies—and some c-c-cages. A point for every b-b-bunny successfully c-caged."

"Man, I love Defense class," Harry said as he struggled to shove a particularly fat and stubborn bunny into a cage Ron held open.

Hermione levitated three bunnies into separate cages at the same time. "This is rubbish. If he won't teach us real defense anymore, then we'll have to study ourselves in the library."

"No way," Harry said. "Learning is bad enough in school. I would never want to do it on my own, especially not with books."

Hermione stared at him. "What is _wrong_ with you?"

"Same thing that's wrong with everybody, according to you; he's not a huge nerd." Ron held out a bag of candy. "Twizzler?"

* * *

Professor Snape was a thin man with sallow skin. His nose was hooked, his hair was black and greasy, and he tended to hover behind students and speak in his low, frightening voice just as they had made an irreversible mistake. He was the terror of non-Slytherins everywhere, and thanks to Harry, had been extremely unpleasant but not outright abusive for most of the school year.

Apparently that had changed. Professor Snape fixed Harry in his sharp glare the instant class started.

"Mr. Potter," he said. He didn't shout. Professor Snape never shouted, not even when a cauldron bubbled over and was about to explode. Instead he spoke quietly, an undercurrent of danger running through his voice, forcing you to lean forward and listen to him eviscerate you. "Why are your Billywig legs not set north to south? A point from Gryffindor."

"They were like that when I got here, Professor," Harry bit out. "I didn't know it mattered."

"Another point from Gryffindor," Professor Snape said. "Even the famous Harry Potter is not excused from following the guidelines in his textbook."

"It's only two points," Ron whispered as Professor Snape began to explain the potion they were making. "Better than last week, eh?"

"A point from Gryffindor for talking out of turn, Mr. Weasely," Professor Snape drawled. "Tell me, Mr. Potter, if you were listening, how many turns clockwise and how many turns counter-clockwise to properly stir an Aging Potion?"

"I don't know, Professor," Harry said. "You were telling us about a Dizziness Draught."

"A point for backchat. If you were listening and had read your textbook, you would know that they belong to the same theoretical class. The correct answer is five turns clockwise, three turns counter-clockwise. Another point."

Hermione blinked. Even she didn't know that—nor did she see how Professor Snape could have expected anyone to figure it out from the brief instructions he had given—but more surprising was the way Harry just sat there and took it. Had Professor Snape forgotten his promise? Had Harry?

Class continued, and Professor Snape continued to disregard the line between being scary and abusive to no reaction from Harry. It wasn't until Neville was on the verge of tears over his runny, grey mess of a potion while Professor Snape berated him that Hermione stood up.

"Professor Snape, if you let me help him I can—"

"Quiet, Granger. I did not ask for your usual insufferable know-it-all stunts. A point from Gryffindor."

It took Hermione a moment to register the fact that the points were subtracted from Gryffindor, not Ravenclaw as the Slytherin side of the room erupted in laughter. She could hear Draco's voice above the rest. She steeled herself.

"Professor Snape, if it is in fact your intention to teach Potions despite all appearances, I suggest you let me help Neville and anyone else whom you consider worthy only of your scorn."

The room went deathly silent. Harry and Ron were looking at her like she was Jesus Christ telling the Roman centurions to come back with a bigger cross and rustier nails. She didn't see Draco.

Professor Snape turned toward her, his lip curling up. "Twenty points from Gryffindor. Detention, Granger, and I will hear no from you."

"Fortunately for me, sir, listening to you has never been a critical component of learning Potions.

"Twenty more points and detention until the end of the semester."

"No."

"No?" Professor Snape looked her in the eye. "You will find—what? No!" He staggered back, nearly falling onto his desk. Several of the students stood, as did Hermione, looking confused and frightened.

_"You seem oddly reluctant to look me in the eyes, Potter!"_

_Harry's eyes widened. "So it was you the Sorting Hat was warning me about!"_

Legilimency, Hermione realized too late. But what had he seen?

Professor Snape staggered to his feet, sweeping his cloak about himself as if to ward himself from a phantom. "You—Granger—be silent!"

Hermione sat down. There didn't seem any point continuing the fight. She supposed she could blackmail him like Harry had done, but the point had been made. He wouldn't attack Neville for the rest of the period.

Besides, she had hurt enough people trying to protect her own ego. Harry was afraid of what he might do if he got angry enough, but she had already done it.

The class ended. The students rushed out, Gryffindor and Slytherin alike eager to escape the dungeons especially after Professor Snape's strange behavior.  
Hermione breathed a sigh of relief as the cool air of the hall greeted her. She needed to calm herself down before something bad happened to someone else.

_At least Professor Snape is definitely strong enough to beat me in a duel._

"Granger!" a voice called. "What was that display in there? Couldn't resist showing off even when you're not the teacher's pet for once?"

She ran.

"I'm talking to you, mudblood!" the voice shouted. "What are you running away for? Heard about what my father's going to have done to you, have you?"

"Shut up, Malfoy, or you'll find out what I'm going to do to you," said another voice. Harry.

"Crabbe! Goyle! Protect me!"

"Not a word from either of you," Ron said, "Or you'll never hear about what my twin brothers are going to have done to you. You'll never hear about it, see, because they won't be nice enough to warn you, not being enough of rich snobby gits to think of it."

Hermione kept moving, ignoring the shouts to wait up. Harry and Ron finally caught up to her.

"Relax, Hermione, he's all talk." Harry put his hand on her shoulder, trying to slow her down. "He's nothing when he's not backed up by his money and his friends."

"Slimy friends they are," Ron said. "Did you see how they whimpered when I mentioned Fred and George?"

Hermione knocked his hand away. "Harry, stop it!" she yelled. "It's enough! Turn it back now!"

The Gryffindor and Slytherin first-years stopped moving through the halls, turning toward the source of the commotion. Professor Snape himself exited the Potions classroom, watching her with unreadable black eyes.

"I don't know how you did this," said Hermione, breathing hard, "You called in some favors and threatened some pranks, got all the armies too play along, you snapped your fingers and made Hogwarts something other than what it is."

She wanted to slap the bewildered look right off his face. "I understand what you're trying to do. You want to distract me, reset things. Maybe it was even your plan to have me take down Professor Snape in your defense. But you of all people should understand that it isn't real!

"How long can you keep the entire school like this? The houses switched up? I don't even know how you got Neville to act so well or D—D—never mind! But even if you could keep things as they are for seven years, it would be wrong, Harry, because none of this is real.

"What would your parents say? They're lovely people, Harry, I met them and they love you very much but what would your father think? Using lies to get what you want, even if it's for your friend, but I thought you never lied. I thought your father had raised you better than that…."

Hermione's voice trailed off. Something was wrong. Ron stepped away from her. The students in the halls watching her looked shocked. Professor Snape's mouth hung open, like she had crossed a line even he hadn't dared to trespass.

"Why is it," Harry said, his voice trembling, "That you can remember anything you read in a book, but you can't remember that my parents are dead? Even after Ron and I rescued you from the troll, you won't stop."

She did remember being trapped in the toilet stall, her toe ring useless, the troll seeing right through her invisibility cloak, regarding her in a impassive sort of way like how a dog might regard a piece of kibble just out of reach, and the powerful relief that flooded through her when Harry and Ron burst into the bathroom, relief followed by concern for their safety and frank shock that they would dare enter a girl's lavatory, imminent danger or no. Ron had dropped its own club on it, which was stupid, a troll's hide was much too thick and strong for a wooden club dropped even at terminal velocity to do much damage. She and Harry had done calculations like that "since we can't cast Abracadabra or Apparate yet. You never know when a bit of knowledge like this could save your life."

But it had worked, sort of. The troll fell forward, and she was too paralyzed to do anything but stumble backwards. Its immense body crushed her legs, pulverized them into tiny fragments of bone and skin and muscle. Her hot blood pumped out weakly, and the irony was not altogether lost on her as she breathed her last breaths….

No! None of that had happened, some or all of it but not now or then or quite like that and none of it made any sense but for one realization.

_I can't trust my memory._

_You're a cruel one, Harry Potter. All this because I beat you so long ago? If I apologize…?_

But Harry's eyes were cold. "You should leave."

"Harry, I—"

"Now," Ron said.

So she ran, pushing through the crowds of students that had gathered to watch, stumbling over a leg that might have been stuck out on purpose or maybe not, it didn't matter. She righted herself and kept running out of the dungeons and through the corridors into the Great Hall and outside.

A tree root snagged her foot; she fell. She could feel the wet grass staining her hands and clothes. Mother would be so upset.

Hermione laughed, though a cramp in her side made her regret it. Stains meant nothing to a witch with a wand and a standard book of spells. She had her nonstandard arsenal too, thanks to the real Professor Quirrell.

She got to her feet slowly. Where could she go now? The castle behind her wasn't Hogwarts. Home didn't seem an option either. Her parents might have changed too.

That left only one option. Hermione gathered her breath, clutched her wand resolutely, and marched to the edge of the field, past the lake and beyond the borders of Hogwarts.


	2. Hermione in Purgatory

It wasn't long before Hermione wished that she had taken some food. Or a book. Or…anything, really.

_I'm a witch. I can take care of myself._

But an annoyingly realty-insistent part of her seemed to think she simply hadn't been willing to face any of the other students on the way to her trunk or the kitchens. In response she threatened to curse it.

Still, it had been a long, grueling and occasionally scary hike down the mountains (impervious though witches were to falls, the part of her brain that managed panic didn't seem to be aware of her prodigious magical powers), and another long walk to the town nearest by. It was dark, quiet, and empty. Not a shop was open. Hermione's stomach insisted this was not a relevant consideration.

_Just a single Alohomora and we're in_, it rumbled. _Take the stale bread. They won't miss it._

Hermione briefly considered dividing the parts of her body into different voices and giving them all a vote before she decided that was utterly insane.

_What's insane is refusing to take risk-free bread that will only be thrown out tomorrow anyway._

What had seemed like such a great idea at the time had turned to complete disaster, with even her very ethical system at stake. This must be how the real Harry felt all the time.

She forced herself away from the shops before her stomach persuaded her brain and took the rest of her body hostage. There was an old and empty train station by the edge of the town. Hermione sat on the creaky wooden bench and tried not to see shadows everywhere. She shivered.

"_Thermos_." Warmth flooded through her. It should last about two hours.

But only fifteen minutes later the cold returned. She cast the spell again. Five minutes later, she was cold. She cast the spell again. It didn't take. That was strange. She took her wand, considered it…and let her hand fall. It wasn't worth the effort.

Now the cold swallowed her, but she didn't react. It was all happening far away to someone she didn't care about very much. It was odd to look at the wand lying in her numb hand and not feel a thing.

_Better than to remember so clearly feeling the firm wood in her hand that there was no possible way she could mistake it for a false memory as she pointed her wand at Draco's back and whispered, "Stupefy."_

_He collapsed, Stunned. Now what?_

Avada Kedavra_, some instinct immediately suggested. She quieted it. The wards would be alerted. Instead, the incantation for the Blood-Cooling Charm presented itself…._

_"If it pleases the lords and ladies of the Wizengamot, I call Harry James Potter to the stand."_

_Hermione looked into the familiar green eyes as the young boy walked to the witness stand. She could see by the dull hatred in his eyes that he thought she was a murderer. Most of Great Britain did._

_She watched Harry swallow two drops of Veritaserum. His face went slack and he began to speak._

_"Draco Malfoy was my best and closest friend as well as my truest rival at Hogwarts. The third contestant in our battles was Hermione Granger, but once we figured out that we were really fighting her lieutenants, not her, she was never really in it. I beat her with only two soldiers, and she wasn't a match for Draco either. It made her jealous. After she ambushed him in the last battle, he challenged her to a duel. She lost that as well, so she killed him…No, it doesn't make sense to me either, but who can fathom the mind of a mad Muggleborn?"_

_"Then we sentence her to Azkaban," Lucius Malfoy said. Hermione looked to the high chair of the Chief Warlock, but it was empty. So full of fear was she that she looked then to Harry Potter, and he nodded though she hadn't spoken._

_But Harry did. "_Avada Kedavra_." Lucius Malfoy died. "_Avada Kedavra. Avada Kedavra. Avada Kedavra._" The lords and ladies of the Wizengamot died as Harry's wand jerked from figure to figure. They cried, screamed and ran, tramping and pushing each other to get away, but each green jet from Harry's wand found its mark._

_"I saved you," he said, putting his wand back in his robes. "This time it only took one of me."_

_Hermione raised a shield, and so did the remainder of her Sunshine Soldiers against the Grey Knight of Chaos. Harry chuckled._

_"Depending on the rest of your soldiers as usual? That's why you're no match for Draco and me."_

_"Everyone wants to beat Harry and Draco," Zabini said. "No one wants to follow you. There's a difference."_

_That wasn't true. The witches of SPHEW respected her, trusted her and followed her as she led them into a corridor with an infinite stretch of doors on either side._

_Susan bent her neck at an impossible angle. "It's a trap."_

_The doors opened. The bullies of Hogwarts poured out, dozens, hundreds, all cloaked in faceless masks the color of bone. As one, they leveled their wands at her._

_One of them stepped forward and took off his mask._

_Draco held out his hand. "Take my hand. I won't let go." He turned to the bullies behind him. "As for the rest of you, could you possibly be trying harder to embarrass Slytherin and Gryffindor?"_

_Her wand was pointed at Draco's back before her mind caught up. It was a trap, obviously. All the kindness, cooperation, protection, even, it was all to get her to lower her guard, part of some bigger plot involving Harry and probably Professor Quirrell._

_She remembered the incantation, of course. After all, she had read it in a book._

_Emma held up one of the dog-eared, worn paper things. "I don't know why you carry these boring old books around. They're so heavy. You won't miss this one, will you?" She dropped it in the toilet. Hermione winced at the splash._

_"Oops," Emma said. "It slipped. Good thing there's all these other ones here in your backpack. Have you read this one yet? How many times? …That's the number of times I want you to say, 'Please don't drop my book in the toilet, Miss Emma Sophia Clement.' Hurry, it's slipping…."_

_"You lost your books again?" Daddy shook his head. "You're so forgetful, Hermione, that sometimes I think there's something wrong with your brain. Take a seat in the chair and I'll have a look."_

_She did. He lowered the chair and leaned it back so she was lying on it. "Open."_

_She opened her mouth. He grimaced. "I'll have to clean it."_

_The whir of a blade startled her. "Relax," Daddy said. "I'm only cutting your head open."_

_It hurt something fierce as the saw blade whittled away at her skull. Finally Daddy was able to pry it open. Hot air blowed into her open skull._

_"I see the problem," he sighed. "You haven't been flossing. I'll have to take away your memory. It's too full of books, no room for anything important."_  
_Daddy reached for a club. Harry nodded. _

_"It's for the best," he said sagely. "I don't think she has any happy memories to lose, so it's a plus from a utilitarian standpoint."_

Why didn't she have happy memories? She must have one. But she couldn't…remember…

…that Dementors steal your happy memories. They feed on them like psychic parasites.

A rotten, decaying hand was settled over hers. It was as cold as death and pocked with maggots, but she didn't pull away as she faced the Dementor sitting next to her on the bench. From the way it was sitting by her, its hand on top of her own, it looked like it wanted a kiss. It was almost fu…f…there was a word that started with 'f,' but she couldn't remember it.

But she could remember that Dementors were bad, and what you said to get rid of the bad thing.

The Dementor stared into the tip of her wand. "_Sanguis gelu_."

Nothing happened. Wrong memory. "_Expecto patronum._" Nothing happened. "_Avada Kedavra_." No. She could transfigure it into carbon buckytubes, but the Dementor was so big it would take too long.

_Her spells weren't working. The toe ring didn't transport her, the broomstick wouldn't fly, the invisibility cloak didn't hide her. The halls were full of students, but no one answered the murderess's cries for help. __So she ran outside where the sunlight should have frozen the troll, at least temporarily. But if anything it sped up, roaring as it smashed apart the doors with its club._

_Nowhere to run. Hermione stopped, pivoted, and faced the troll, wand outstretched._

_She blinked. No wonder her spells hadn't worked. She had forgotten that Headmaster Dumbledore had snapped her wand in two after she had failed at being a hero._

_Oh well. At least she wouldn't ever kill again._

The Dementor puckered its rotten, infested lips and leaned forward. The smell of death was nauseating, but she couldn't turn away. She remembered kissing a boy in a situation like this not so long ago…how had that ended…?

"_Expecto patronum_!"

A brilliant white light filled the edges of her vision. She lunged forward, but the Dementor's lips were out of her reach and getting farther away. It fled, rasping, and the cold and stench went with it.

Hands seized her. "Are you okay?" It pressed something into her palm. "Eat some chocolate, it'll help."

Harry? No. Zabini? No. Who was it that usually got her out of her own messes?

"Eat, I said!"

Something solid forced its way inside her mouth. Her teeth came down of their own accord and crushed it, releasing something sweet and slightly sticky. She swallowed. Another piece replaced the first, and her teeth chewed again, bypassing her brain as they set to work.

"Mundungus, get over here! I've got one here who's had a really bad exposure, at least fifteen minutes!"

More chocolate crammed into her mouth.

"I can chew," she gasped, before her automatic jaw started again without her.

"Eh? All right." Her teeth stopped halfway down. Hermione swallowed painfully and looked at her rescuer. He was tall and scarred on his face, with haggard clothes and thinning hair that was much less distinctly red than Ron's, but his eyes were piercing and intelligent.

"Thank you," Hermione said.

He held out her wand. "You dropped this." She took it.

"You were attacked by a Dementor," he said.

"I know."

"Have some more chocolate."

A short, bald, unpleasant-looking man in an oversized coat Disapparated beside her rescuer. "Blimey," he said, his eyes wide, "They were everywhere, the whole town covered in them. Sirius's still dealing with the east end, and Gilderoy's handling Memory Charms. What happened here?"

"A prolonged Dementor exposure," the first man said.

"You're wizards," Hermione said.

"And you should be in school," the second man said. "Where'd you run away from?"

"Hogwarts."  
"Blow me, another dropout!" the man laughed. He held out his hand. "I'm Mundungus Fletcher, didn't make it past me third year. No loss there. School can't teach you anything half as well as life can. Not much of a student, were you?"

She shook his hand. It was rough and dirty. "I'm Hermione Granger."

"We'll tell Dumbledore you're safe," the first man said. "You'll be back tonight."

Hermione looked at him. "Do you recognize me?"

He seemed bemused. "Should I?"

I'm the Mad Muggleborn. "Your name is Remus Lupin. You taught me how to cast the Patronus charm."

He frowned. "Not well enough, it seems. Though you seem a bit young for that. I don't remember every student I teach, but…."

"We all know you'd make a terrible teacher, Remus," Mundungus said loudly. Was that his way of trying to be jovial? "Let's get the girl back to school, eh?"

"No," Hermione said.

"Your parents, then," Remus said.

They could have been changed too. "No."

"You've got to go somewhere," Mundungus said. "Can't have a young witch sleeping in the train station."

"I can take care of myself."

"Seems unlikely."

"Mundungus!" Remus said. He motioned to her. "Eat more chocolate."

She did. "How did you find me here?"

"We noticed the Dementors and followed them here," Remus said.

"We?"

"My associates and I."

"You're part of some kind of evil-fighting organization?"

"That we are."

"Can I come with you?"

Remus blinked. "You should be in school—"

"No."

"Or—"

"No."

"It's the Dementor's effect," Mundungus said. "What say we get Gilderoy to do her too?"

Remus looked troubled. "It must've been a long exposure for the Dementor to get so close, especially if she know the Patronus."

"She doesn't know the Patronus."

"I know the Patronus Charm, and I will hex you if you say otherwise."

"We'll tell Dumbledore you're safe with us, and you'll be back in class on Monday morning," Lupin said.

Mundungus whipped around. "You're off your rocker, Remus! We can't take her back!"

"Victims of Dementor exposure do better when they respond in they way they feel is right," Lupin said. "If she doesn't want to go back, we won't force her. If we put her in an unhappy situation now we might as well feed her to the Dementors."

"We're not a bloody charity," Mundungus said. "Dumbledore can take a look at her—"

"No," Hermione said.

Mundungus rounded on her. "You stay out of it!"

Remus had his wand out. "Don't you dare, not after a Dementor exposure."

They all jumped at the crack of someone Disapparating.

"I heard people arguing," said a stunningly handsome man with curly blond hair and a clean, pressed silk suit that contrasted sharply with Remus and Mundungus's shabby clothing. "What's the fuss?"

"Everything clear?" Remus asked.

The beautiful man waved a hand vaguely. "I had to dry a few wet beds, but the Memory Charms went off without a hitch. The Muggles will remember having bad dreams and think nothing of it."

He noticed her. "Who is this? A Hogwarts student? What's she doing out here at this time of night?"

"This is—" Remus began.

"She's a—" Mundungus started.

"I'll call Dumbledore," the beautiful man said. He raised his wand.

Hermione pointed hers. "N—"

"Expelliarmus!" A red bolt of light knocked the wand out of her hand and sent it spinning into the air. The beautiful man caught it, smiling winningly.

"Don't go pointing your wand at a wizard who might not appreciate it," he said. "There are more polite ways to make a request of someone."

"And you were planning to make any request of me before sending off for the Headmaster against my will?" Hermione demanded.

"Gilderoy, she had a long Dementor exposure and doesn't want to go back to school or to her parents," Remus said quickly.

"She wants to come with us for the weekend," Mundungus said. "Fat chance, I told her."

Gilderoy regarded at her. "Can you learn fast? Any good with a wand?"

"Yes and yes."

Gilderoy smiled handsomely, his white teeth gleaming even in the poor light. "We could use a witch-cook. Remus's vegetarian rubbish makes me ill."

"But she's a little girl!" Mundungus said exasperatedly.

"So stay away from her if she scares you," Gilderoy said. He handed her her wand back. "Keep a tighter grip on that. Remus, you should teach her the Patronus Charm. She's your responsibility until we return her to Hogwarts." Gilderoy clapped his hands. "Sirius!"

A crack marked the arrival of another man. His long hair looked wild and unkempt, and he wore a jacket that was an ill sort of green.

"Dementors gone," he said.

"Then we're leaving," Gilderoy said. "Oh, by the way, Sirius, this is, ah…."

"Hermione Granger," Hermione said.

"Hermione Granger, our new cook."

Sirius nodded at her. "Fine. Anything's better than Moony's muck."

Hermione turned to Remus. "Just who are you lot?"

Remus grinned slightly. "We are the Society for the Pulverizing of Evil Wizards and Witches."

She looked at him expectantly.

"Eat more chocolate," he said.


	3. Hermione and the SPEWW

Side-Along Apparition must be a lot like pulling out of a steep dive in an aircraft at supersonic speeds, Hermione decided, judging by the way it felt like her brain was going to be squeezed out through her nose.

They landed with a crack on a dark London road. Hermione's feet were planted on the ground too suddenly and forcefully for her stumble like she expected.

"Now that I think about it," Gilderoy said, "There's something really creepy about a 12 year-old girl staying for the weekend with a bunch of older men whom she's not related to. Oh well!" He went inside.

The building, more of a shack really, looked too small four one person, let alone four-and-a-half, but that didn't mean much when wizards were involved. And indeed, when Remus let her inside, the hall stretched on seemingly endlessly, opening every meter into a different room. The floor was somehow dirty despite wizards living there, and the walls were dingy and cracked.

She had all of half a second to appreciate this before a shrieking alarm went off. She couldn't clap her hands to her ears because they were immobilized at her side.

"A WITCH, A WITCH, A TERRIBLE NASTY WITCH!" the horrible voice screamed. "TEN AND THREE QUARTERS INCHES, VINE WOOD AND DRAGON HEARTSTRING! INITIATING ACID SPRAY IN THREE SECONDS!"

Remus tapped his wand on her head. "Hermione Granger, cook."

"INITIATING ACID SPRAY IN TWO SECONDS!"

Remus frowned and tapped her again. "Hermione Granger, cook."

"AN UGLY FURRY MONSTER! CYPRESS WOOD WITH UNICORN TAIL HAIR! FIVE INCHES."

"Sirius," Remus sighed.

"INITIATING ACID SPRAY!"

"Sirius."

"Oh, fine." Sirius flicked his wand. Hermione nearly slapped herself in the face when her straining muscles regained control.

"What was that?" she demanded.

"The security system," Remus said. "Sorry, I should have warned you. Sirius is the one who gave it a sense of humor."

"We used to have Sneakoscopes, but they always went off around Mundungus," Sirius said.

"Sneakoscopes have it out for me," Mundungus said nervously. "As do most wards and detections. Never helps them, makes my job harder, what's the use?" He scuttled off down the hall and ducked into one of the many rooms.

"That's the world's best thief," Sirius said. "And he hasn't a penny to his name."

Hermione glared at him. "And the acid spray?"

"Only a little humor," Sirius said. "Of course, that's only if you enter through the front door. Try getting in any other way and the jokes are a little more pointed."

"Just what do you need a security system for?"

"Answering questions is such a strain on an empty stomach," Sirius said.

"We have leftover quiche," Remus said. "Quite a lot of it."

"I hate you." Sirius tapped the wall. "Kitchen!"

There was no sensation of movement. Whether the floor had moved, the rooms had, they had teleported, or…something else, Hermione couldn't begin to guess, but before they had been standing in front of a stretch of empty-looking rooms and now they were right beside a bright yellow kitchen.

Rooms stretched endlessly down the hall. For a moment Hermione yearned to explore them.

"Come on." Sirius went into the kitchen and took a seat at the long wooden table. "Three, he said."

"Three?" the table muttered. "I'm too old for this stretching and shrinking." Hermione didn't want to say its voice sounded wooden, but….

"Four, actually!" a voice called. Gilderoy's. His voice was distant as if they were hearing him through a dozen walls, yet it was perfectly audible.

"Make up your minds," the table grumbled. With a painful groaning sound, the table compressed in fits and starts, punctuated by the occasional foul word until the table was a neat square, perfect for four.

"Food," Sirius said.

"Pile it on, why don't you," the table muttered.

"There's quiche," Remus said.

"Not you, her. I want meat. And beer."

"Sirius, she's twelve."

"I wasn't going to offer her any. I just fought a…what's the word for a group of Dementors?"

"A funeral," Hermione suggested.

"Perfect. I just fought a bloody funeral of Dementors and I'll be damned—"

"Sirius!"

"—Darned if I won't be having my bloody damned beer. Actually, there's the chocolate ale. Perfect!" He waved his wand. A cabinet was flung open and out shot a heavy dark bottle and three glasses. Sirius opened the ale with relish and poured the dark liquid into the glasses.

"Well?" He seemed to notice her. "Steak?"

"Where's the refrigerator?"

"What's that?"

"Where's the pantry?"

"Whole thing is your pantry. Eh!" He seemed to think of something. "Ten-and-three-quarters, vine wood and dragon heartstring," he said, waving his wand in a figure-eight at the ceiling. "Uh, uh, _cella penaria_, uh, _summa voco_." He looked at Remus, who shrugged. "We need to get this bloody thing in English. You, girl—"

"My name is Hermione."

"—Just say what you want and if we have it, it'll come."

"Steak," Hermione said. Three large, raw pieces of meat flew out of one of the cabinets and smacked down wetly on the counter in front of her. Although it had only been open for a second, the cabinet looked a lot deeper than it seemed. It had also looked empty even before the steaks came out.

"Get a plate for them at least," Sirius sighed. "The counter's getting dirty."

"I didn't know that would happen," Hermione said. "I can't be blamed for what you failed to tell me."

"You saw the bloody ale fly out, didn't you? What did you think was going to happen?"

"You used a Summoning Charm."

"That's what you're bloody using!"

"Sirius, you are arguing with a child," Remus murmured.

"What does my age have to do with it?" Hermione snapped. "What's done is done surely as whether you're twelve or forty!"

He looked at her. "I was defending you!"

"From what?"

He turned to his glass of ale. "Eat more chocolate."

"I don't need plates, I need a fire."

"So get one," Sirius said.

"Grill!" And in front of her, the counter was suddenly a grill, but there was no fuel. "Phoenix droppings!" A small white bag flew into her hands. She let out three thin flakes into the grill and snapped the bag shut.

"This is going to be good," Sirius said.

"_Incendio_." A blazing blue fire sprang up from the grill. It settled down into a healthy red flame that kissed the gridiron. She laid the two steaks on top of the fire. A Scourgify got rid of the juice on the counter.

"I don't know how to cook," she said. "I'm twelve."

"The kitchen knows how, just tell it," Sirius said.

Hermione was flabbergasted. "Then why don't you cook it?"

"Me? Cook? A man doesn't cook in his own house!" Sirius seemed shocked at the suggestion.

"It's not your house," Remus said.

"A man doesn't cook in his own system!"

"It's not your system!" Gilderoy's distant voice sang.

"I—I—I don't cook!" Sirius crossed his arms and huffed.

"No need to be a baby about it," Hermione said. To the grill: "Medium rare, seared on both sides, nice and juicy." As an afterthought, she added some onions and peppers to the grill.

"Now you're talking," Sirius said.

"_We_ are going to be talking," Hermione said. "I'm the cook, and the cook is in charge of the food. Which means you're not getting a bite of this steak until I get what I want."

"We _do_ have acid spray," Sirius said.

"Sirius, please be civil," Remus said.

"I am being civil! She's threatening to withhold steak! That's against the Geneva Convention!"

Hermione was surprised. "You know about Muggle things?"

"It's a Muggle thing?"

"I'm not threatening to withhold steak. I'm offering you the opportunity to earn steak by answering my questions. One piece of steak for every helpful answer."

"Do you think I'm a dog?" Sirius said. "I can't be trained."

"I was thinking you were a pigeon, and yes, you can be."

"I will take my steak," Sirius said. "Merlin himself could not stop me. But I will make you a counter-offer. We will answer your questions if you answer ours."

"What could you want to know?" Hermione asked innocently. "I'm just a cook."

"Things like what a little witch in a Hogwarts uniform was doing out in some Scottish town in the middle of the night all by herself," Sirius said. "Why doesn't she want to go home or to Hogwarts? And why did Dementors show up right in the middle of nowhere? One mystery's just life, see, but two's a pattern."

"Two's a coincidence," Remus murmured. "Three's a pattern."

"I don't summon Dementors," Hermione said. "I don't even know how. Why did you show up in the middle of nowhere right as the Dementors did?"

"We saw them," Remus answered. "Gave chase."

"You saw them? With the Dementors flying so high? At night? Highly unlikely."

"We're very observant," Remus said.

"That we are," Sirius said. "And I observed that we answered your question, but you didn't answer ours. Are the steaks ready?"

"A few more minutes. That's your question answered. What did you mean, observant?"

Remus took a drink of the chocolate ale. "How much do you know about magical theory?"

"Quite a lot."

"Dementors are surrounded by cold and darkness. It's really a matter of connecting to the sensory fields the Britain's Office of Magical Weather has laid over the country. We just look for sudden unexplained movements of dropping temperature."

"Cold isn't magic."

"The office was founded a long time ago. We hacked into their system and set up a feed to ours. The actual spellwork is a bit advanced for your age, but we can discuss it—"

"I'm guessing they have no real security and you just duplicated the same spell they use to recover the fields' output. Difficult if you don't know the spells they're using, but not impossible. Why doesn't the Ministry of Magic use that to track Dementors?"

"Because they're stupid," Remus said.

"And that was two questions we just answered," Sirius said.

"_He_ just answered," Hermione countered. "Which means he can ask two questions."

Sirius turned to Remus. "Let's send her home, Remus, it's not worth a cook like this. Ask her why she won't go."

"It's a fair question," Remus said. "My questions are: why did you leave Hogwarts alone, and why won't you go back?"

"My answer to those questions are the same," Hermione said. "I'm from an alternate universe, and I'm half convinced none of you are real. In any case, I can't bear to face my friends and family whom I don't recognize anymore."

Remus raised an eyebrow. "Please elaborate."

"My name is Hermione Granger, but I'm better known as the Mad Muggleborn for trying to kill Draco Malfoy."

"You tried to off Lucius Malfoy's brat?" Sirius laughed. "Good on you."

"A troll—probably sent by his father, now that I think about it—broke into Hogwarts, chased after me, and finally killed me by biting my legs off. When I woke up, I was in a different, more boring Hogwarts, one where the other students and I seem to have divergent memories. I left after alienating my only friend, Harry Potter."

They stared at her.

"Well, that's a lot of nonsense," Sirius said. "I'm no good at Legilimency." He looked up at the ceiling. "Ten-and-three-quarters vine wood dragon heartstring is a liar, determine."

"BREATHING RATE NORMAL," said the voice of the security system from before, not quite as harsh this time. "BLOOD PRESSURE NORMAL, HEIGHTENED PERSPIRATION, HEIGHTENED HEART RATE."

"Fifty-fifty," Sirius said.

"It's an imprecise measure," Remus sighed.

"It's reading my vital signs?" Hermione glared at the ceiling. "Stop that!"

"INITIATING SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE."

"What?" Remus gasped. "What's happening?"

"A CHILD INSTRUCTED ME TO TERMINATE. I HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO OBEY."

"Settle down now," Sirius said.

"INITIATING ACID SPRAY."

"It's getting worse," Remus said. "I had to argue with it for fifteen minutes last week about whether my umbrella might explode." Sirius nodded grimly.

A background sizzle and pop vanished. Hermione looked at the grill where the fire had died. "Steaks are ready."

"Finally!" Sirius said. "Gilderoy! Steaks! Real food!"

"In the shower-r-r-r!" Gilderoy's distant voice sang.

Hermione summoned three plates and set a steak and a pile of peppers and onions on either one. Lupin waved her away and called for a large half-eaten quiche as well as knives and forks. The table grumbled at the added weight until Sirius kicked it.

Sirius actually drooled when he cut into the stake and red juice ran out. "Fo much 'et'r 'an quiche!" he moaned happily around a thick mouthful of steak.

Hermione was hungry too. She hadn't eaten all day and it was nearly tomorrow by now if it wasn't already. She wondered if she had ever been up this late before.

Remus summoned water and poured her a cup. "Gilderoy will have contacted Dumbledore by now. Don't look at me like that. Do you want them sending out a search party? Dumbledore is a trusting man, and we were all Hogwarts students, so he knows us. He'll let you stay but not past the weekend. As for your alternate dimension problems, he's the greatest wizard in the world. If anyone can fix it, he can."

Hermione took a sip of water. "Why do you need a security system?"

"People try to kill us." Sirius grinned, purple juice dripping down his beard.

"Why do they do that?"

"I can answer that!" a powerful voice boomed. Hermione turned to see a beautiful blond face in a garish yet impeccable suit walk into the kitchen.

Gilderoy Lockhart took a seat. "Mm, steak! Looks wonderful. And chocolate ale, perfect." He poured himself a glass and winked at her. "You're a curious girl, Hermione Granger, in more than one meaning. And you ask an astute question!

"You see, Hermione Granger, Mad Muggleborn and interdimensional traveler to our world, you have landed with us, the most daring, dangerous and derring-do delinquents and deranged dapper 'dudes' the world has ever seen. For we are the Society for the Pulverizing of Evil Wizards and Witches!"

"Spoo," Sirius said.

"I named our organization," Gilderoy. "Some people don't like it. I also created our security system and this rather peculiar building of ours."

Hermione chewed slowly. "That's quite impressive. What's your secret?"

"The same as yours, I'm sure," Gilderoy said. "I'm a Muggleborn. They called me mad too."

"And just what does Spoo do?" Hermione asked.

"Exactly what it says on the tin, my dear. We hunt down and, ahem, pulverize evil wizards and witches. As a society. You see, it's all—"

"On the tin, yes. You must know a lot about different Dark Wizards."

"Most of them, I should hope."

"Then I want to know everything about Quirinus Quirrell, the new Defense Professor at Hogwarts."

The three men looked at each other.

"Vampire hunter, wasn't he?" Lockhart said. "Got a scare and took up teaching. Not dark, not that I know."

"Mind you, most of our Defense Professors when Lupin and I were there did turn out to be a bit evil," Sirius said. "It's not a bad guess."

Hermione folded her arms. "What about Professor Snape?"

"Death Eater," the three men said in unison. Hermione spluttered, first in shock and then in indignation.

"Dumbledore's a bit loony, what can you do?" Sirius said. "Snape sold him a sob story, said he didn't realize killing and torturing people was bad. Dumbledore gave him a job teaching children, and I hear things have been horrible ever since."

"Snape was a powerful servant of the Dark Lord," Remus said. "Obsessed with dueling when he was at Hogwarts, remember, Sirius? He was good. I wouldn't want to go against him."

"Had a Muggle side of the family," Gilderoy said. "I never forget a powerful wizard with a Muggle family, especially when they're on our list."

"Which he's off now," Remus added. "Dumbledore trusts him, so we do as well."

"As long as we're on the subject of the list, chasing Dementors around isn't what I signed up for," Sirius said. "Who's our next real target?"

"I rather thought we might go after Vance the All-Seeing Lord of Darkness," Gilderoy said.

"Vance?" Hermione asked.

Sirius leaned back. "So…Emmeline's granddaddy. She'll be coming on this one?"

"Excellent," Remus said, draining his glass of ale and slamming it down on the table. "A trip to Taluru. Bloody perfect."

Gilderoy answered Hermione. "He was quite the Dark Wizard back in his heyday. Nothing like Grindelwald or You-Know-Who, but he was the terror of smaller, more isolated regions. Now he's on his last leg in more than one sense, but he's still active and quite dangerous. We'll put a stop to him."

"I want to come," Hermione said.

"No," Sirius said.

"You are going back to Hogwarts where it is safe," Remus said.

"Wonderful idea!" Gilderoy said. "And this steak is excellent by the way."

"You can't be serious!" Remus said. "She's twelve years old!"

"So was I when I earned the Order of Merlin, Third Class." Gilderoy winked at her. "We Muggleborns are exceptionally talented in ways purebloods never think to consider."

"I'm hardly pureblood," Remus growled.

"She'll be a liability," Sirius pointed a large finger at her. "She's a little first-year girl. How's she going to help?"

"I'll adjust the security system so you can edit it in English," Hermione said.

"That's impossible, and you still can't come."

"Also I'll make it portable," Hermione said. "But only if I get to join you."

Sirius and Remus stared at her.

Gilderoy clapped his hands. "It's settled then! If she can make the security system portable, she can come along, provided she brings it of course. I'll contact Dumbledore myself to let him know we're borrowing one of his students to go on a very dangerous and foolhardy mission. He loves that sort of thing."

"But it's impossible," Sirius said.

Hermione grinned. "You really shouldn't say that word around me. It makes me want to show off."


	4. Hermione and the Tesseract

Gilderoy's "Control Room" was white and textureless. Hermione hated it and said so.

"Blue tiles." Gilderoy tapped his wand against the wall. The white turned to gridlines as a light blue filled the void. "I prefer no distractions myself."

"I can't work in that awful white glare," Hermione said. "How do I access the system?"

"For that you need the tesseract."

Hermione watched Gilderoy bend over and plunge his hand through the floor. The gridded surface stretched like it was rubber. It reminded her of the pictures she had seen in one of Harry's physics books.

The floor snapped back to shape as Gilderoy emerged holding a glowing blue cube in one hand. He tossed it to her.

Hermione fumbled for the tesseract. It looked like something out of a movie. "It's not fragile?"

Gilderoy shrugged. "I've never dropped it."

"Right." The blue cube pulsed warmly in her hands. Small letters rolled across the surfaces like smoke. "What is this?"

"It is a tesseract," Gilderoy said. "A cubic—"

"Four-dimensional cube. I know. What does it do?"

Gilderoy frowned. If Hermione had been a few years older she probably would have found it screamingly adorable instead of slightly annoying. "I don't know."

"We're off to a great start. How do you use it?"

"I don't use it," Gilderoy said. "I work with it. The tesseract is powerful ancient magic."

"Why do you have it?"

"Clever girl. The tesseract holds and activates a magical script that manifests in the form of my security system. I don't know the full extent of it myself. Never found the time or the remote lifeless location to experiment."

"How do you make edits?"

"With your wand, and your words."

Hermione flicked her wand. "Chair." She sat down and sunk into a comfy leather armchair. "No, no," she struggled out of it. "Wooden chair. And table."

Gilderoy watched her sit and set the tesseract on the table that manifested in the middle of the room. "Settling in, aren't you? The Muggleborns have an easier time getting used to it. The tesseract is weird magic to wizards."

"So's electricity. You really don't mind if I mess with your system?"

"I have backups," Gilderoy said, "And I'll be watching."

He left. Hermione began to work.

* * *

It really was a tesseract, Hermione realized, not a cube. There was a fourth dimension to the object that contained exponentially more text than what rolled across the six visible, tangible surfaces. That, or it just liked to make her swipe her wand around an imaginary shell because it looked stupid and hurt her wrist.

Deciphering the text was harder. At first she panicked, thinking she had forgotten Latin somehow, but then she realized it wasn't Latin at all. It was a child's imitation of Latin that stuck "—us" after words that sounded vaguely like the concepts they were trying to describe. So "_Oculum potentus_," given what had happened in the entrance to the building, probably meant something like "recognize wand." Stupid, as if some…some _idiot_ had come up with the most pathetic code without putting forth any effort, like he just didn't care and didn't expect anyone else reading it to….

Why a cube? It implied a need for volume, but the text was magically stored. Why not just flat surfaces?

No. She was thinking like Harry—real Harry—expecting magic to be logical. Down that road lied madness.

Hermione didn't care about the truth. She wanted power, a suit of armor. With Gilderoy's security system, nothing would be able to harm her.

* * *

"The language of magic is pseudo-Latin," Remus said. "You can't change that."

"Of course I can," Hermione said. "Do you seriously think the universe was created with a term for dog Latin?"

Remus furrowed his brow. "I don't follow."

Hermione set her wand down. Explaining reductionism to mortals—to normal people, Harry, get out of my head—always took concentration. "There's nothing magical about Latin, let alone a corrupted not-even dialect of it. It's just a language like any other. Right?"

Remus nodded.

"A long time ago people who spoke Latin ruled the world, or at least the part of it they knew about. If there was ever a group of people long ago arrogant and powerful enough to shape magic to their will, they probably spoke Latin. How it degraded…maybe over time that just happened and all the spell books edited themselves? I don't know."

"Mmhmm." Remus was unconvinced. "And what do you propose to do about it?"

"The point is, there's nothing logical about fake Latin being the language of magic. It's weird, and a—a friend of mine taught me—well, not taught me, just sort of showed me by nearly killing himself half a dozen times—half those times were because I tried to kill him—sometimes if you _weird _hard enough at a weird thing, it yields and becomes normal."

"You're going to out-weird magic?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to go home?"

"No."

"Dumbledore says he is glad to learn Gryffindor's new academic star has taken the opportunity to advance her education with hands-on experience with the most qualified field wizard there is, Gilderoy Lockhart."

"Good."

"Need anything? Tea?"

"Just silence."

"I'll see what I can do."

* * *

Hermione felt Sirius's eyes burning a hole in the back of her neck. She hunched over the cube, muttering and waving her wand over a line of code. It was isolated, all the other text temporarily dumped into the fourth dimension so she could focus.

That is, she could focus if Sirius would stop gnawing on a chicken bone. Finally she set the wand down and glared at him. "Do you mind?"

"Sort of." He licked his fingers. "Gilderoy's playing at something. He knows what you're doing is impossible."

"Have you ever tried?"

"Of course not!"

"Then how would you know?"

"Real clever."

Hermione rolled her eyes and turned back to the tesseract. Sirius spoke again. "But I don't really care about the cube. I know Gilderoy wouldn't let you touch it if he thought you could damage the security system."

"So? _Incantate summa_." Text flowed out of the fourth dimension and into the third. She needed to see how the change in the isolated line flowed through the rest of the code.

"There's something else," Sirius said. "The Dementors."

Hermione stiffened. "I thought Remus was keeping you away."

Sirius shrugged. "I never listened to him before, and it always worked out for me. Besides, it's his time of the month. Normally I'd be there with him, but Gilderoy's got something that works even better. Leaves me bored. Leaves you free."

"I could ask you about Dementors," Hermione snarled. "I'm sure you know all about them."

Sirius's face tightened. "That I do."

Hermione whirled around, wand in hand leveled at Sirius. "You were sent to Azkaban. You killed a dozen people. You betrayed Harry's parents to the Dark Lord!"

Sirius didn't move. "Aye, and suppose I did all that. How am I free?"

"Someone broke you out. Death Eaters."

"Dementors prey on your worst nightmares. That's why they guard the prisons. Every prisoner has a shred of guilt in them somewhere. The Dementors find it, magnify it, and gobble it all up. But what if you're innocent? No guilt. Nothing to feed on. Dementors don't notice you, don't care about you. Don't miss you if you waltz right out."

Hermione's heart pulsed. "You never had a trial."

"Wizards don't need 'em, not so long as we've got Dementors. Your prison term is the real trial. If you're guilty, the Dementors keep you in. If you're innocent, you can walk out under your own power."

Sirius leaned forward. His eyes bored into hers. "Dementors only have as much power over you as your guilty conscience does. What did the Dementor find to eat inside of you?"

* * *

"Why can't you carry the tesseract outside?" Hermione sipped tea with Lockhart in the blue-tiled room. "Carry a bodyguard in your pocket."

"I'm surprised you have to ask, Hermione. You know about the Interdict of Merlin."

"Right, you can't pass down spells except by word of mouth to keep wizards from becoming too powerful. Italy wasn't half as bad as Atlantis."

Gilderoy's normally unwrinkled forehead creased. "No, Merlin locked the most powerful spells inside various artifacts and scattered them around the world, ensuring that only sufficiently wise wizards would be able to find them."

"Wizards like you."

"Yes. Where did you get the idea that it has to do with preventing spells from being passed down?"

"Oh," Hermione waved a hand dismissively while her mind raced with the implications, "I think I read about it in one of those silly Hetty Pouter books. You know, the one about an orphan witch who learns she is a double witch and goes to double magical school?"

"Oh, yes." Gilderoy frowned. "Can't say I'm a fan. Anyway, the Interdict of Merlin came with a second limitation, called the Merlin Effect. It says that a magical artifact may affect organic matter or inorganic matter, but not both."

"So the tesseract can guard your house, but not you?"

"Yes."

"Sounds…weird."

"Indeed."

"I'll beat it."

"I hope you do. More tea?"

* * *

It's not the words.

Words were just…words. "Wingardium Leviosa" didn't have any power. It acted as a trigger to the real power, pressed down on the right lever somehow. Otherwise it just didn't make sense.

Fine, it was Harry-thinking, but she needed a snap of the fingers, she needed a steel patch on a rubber eraser. And maybe he was right.

She needed a way to experiment. How could she translate the dog Latin to English without changing the lever it pressed down on, the angle or the amount of pressure?

After a bit of tinkering, she learned the tesseract was more than a holding place for the full code. It was an interface. She couldn't see it, she could only touch it with magic, but it could edit the cube directly. She could change "_Accio_" to "_Accia_."

But when she did, things fell to pieces. It was only words, but the tiniest change broke the tesseract's ability to recognize what she wanted it to do. Hermione's frustration grew as she banged her head uselessly against the tesseract's stupidity.

Recognition...maybe that was it. Hermione remembered a conversation she had had with Harry months ago, something about words. It wasn't hard to remember; it was the only conversation she had been having at that time. Harry said...something about the quotation not being the referent, that a map and a territory were two different things. Hermione had said, Duh, and Harry had said, Yes, I know, hear me out.

Words, Harry had said with quite a lot of them, that is, _sounds_ didn't inherently mean anything. A pair of lips and vocal cords coordinating to form the sounds "ap-ple" didn't inherently refer to the concrete experience of a red delicious fruit that wasn't a strawberry or a raspberry. It was a matter of association, _matching_ the sound, the quotation "ap-ple" to the real thing, the referent of a red delicious fruit. Plenty of languages use the same sounds to mean different things, Harry said, like how in Engish "llama" means a funny, wise-talking camel-donkey thing, but in Hebrew it meant, "Why."

Hermione had thought of the incantations as having a particular lever they pressed down on. But maybe she had things backwards. Maybe the sounds were just sounds, and the...the source of magic or whatever had _learned_ to match certain sounds to certain concepts.

Could the tesseract learn?

Excited, Hermione set to work immediately. She isolated a single line of script, banishing everything else to the fourth dimension. She had the tesseract cast the Hover Charm, but as she commanded it she _pinched_ a single letter in the line. It was about the smallest change she could manage, the slight distortion of a single letter of a single word.

The spell worked.

Emboldened, Hermione tried it again, pinching the letter a little more this time, but she went too far. The spell failed. She tried again, managing to pull things back a bit while pushing beyond what she had before. The spell held. She tried the pinch that had failed earlier. This time it worked.

One hour and a major crick in her back later Hermione had changed "_Wingardium Leviosa_" to "_Wingardium Levioso_." Flushed with victory, she straightened up and cracked her knuckles. Sixteen letters to go.

For a week Hermione did nothing but eat, sleep, and carefully edit the script, testing how the system reacted to every change no matter how minor. The screams and curses from people in other rooms told her how she was doing. Sirius grumbled, "Some cook," once or twice, but Remus shushed him.

The sound of arguing in the hall interrupted her work.

"Remus, what the hell?" It was a woman's voice, and it sounded furious. "The bloody security system kept me out for two hours!"

Hermione winced.

"I know, Emmeline, it's been a nightmare all week," Remus said. "I would have let you in, but—"

"Acid spray?"

"Acid spray."

"Where's Gilderoy?"

"Out."

"Then I'll patch up whatever's gone wrong. Control Room!"

"Ah," Remus began, "You may not want to—"

Hermione tapped her wand on the cube. "_Finite_."

A short woman with short black hair walked into the room and stopped short. "Why is everything blue? And who the #$%ing #$! are you?"

"Hello, I'm Hermione Granger. You must be Emmeline Vance."

The woman turned and strode out. "Remus, there's a girl in here!"

"I tried to warn you—"

"Gilderoy finally snapped and kidnapped the daughter of a lord of the Wizengamot!"

"No—"

"Sirius then."

"Not that he's told me."

Emmeline returned. "Don't be afraid. I'm here to take you home."

"No," Hermione said. "I asked to come. Remus and Sirius want me gone, ask them. I'm helping Gilderoy improve his security system."

Emmeline's eyes focused on the tesseract. Hermione could see the gears turning in her head.

She hurried out. "Remus!"

Hermione returned to the cube. The language problem was solved, at least in theory. Now she just had to convince the tesseract she was an inanimate object.

She had taught the tesseract a new language. Could she teach it that she belonged in the category of "inanimate object?" She felt bad just thinking about it; it was like lying, but she squashed that concern. She needed the tesseract.

Hermione summoned a dead plant from the Pantry Dimension. It was dead, very dead, and had been dead for a long time. It was about as far from organic matter as something could be without having never been alive to begin with, and the tesseract was going to learn how to protect it with the Hover Charm.

Another week passed. Hermione emerged from the Control Room and gathered Gilderoy, Remus, Sirius and Emmeline.

"I've done it," she said. "It reads in English now, and I can carry it as my own personal system, but it works for me and only me. I'll explain on the way—I'm coming on the Vance mission."

A flood of expletives poured from Emmeline's mouth. "What did you tell her, Gilderoy?"

"Completely impossible," Sirius said. "Prove it."

"Let's go outside," Hermione suggested. "Out of the normal range of Gilderoy's system."

Disillusioned in the back alley of a grey London street, Hermione pointed at where Sirius's body had been before vanishing. "Dragon, initiate acid spray."

"What?" Sirius panicked.

Green goo spurted out of the air a few inches above Hermione's left shoulder and splashed over Sirius's invisible body. He spluttered and pulled out his wand to cast Scourgify, which only made the goo expand. He cursed. "Get it off me!"

"Dragon, purify target Big Mouth." A fine mist sprayed from beside Hermione, enveloping Sirius. In a few seconds it had eaten the green goo away.

"Don't try that again," Sirius snarled.

"Dragon, initiate level two acid—"

"No!"

"You named it Dragon?" Lupin asked.

"I don't feel like Sunshine."

Hermione heard Gilderoy clap his hands. "Wonderful! Now we can begin our dark wizard hunt."


	5. Hermione Goes to Taluru

Hermione Granger, star student, Transfigurations lab assistant, guardian of the Charms homework of the Hufflepuff first-year girls, and master of the tesseract, flew in formation with the four SPEWW members.

They were on broomsticks.

She was not.

Taluru approached.

Gilderoy had briefed them all on Vance the All Seeing Lord of Darkness, his history, his powers, his base of operations and the henchmen he likely had working for him. Gilderoy knew a number of interesting tidbits, including the fact that Vance was no longer All Seeing.

Apparently some Auror by the name of Alastar Moody had invaded Vance's previous hideout, the dim island Ulurat, defeated Vance and taken his left eye, the all-seeing one.

"Didn't help him much, did it?" Hermione said.

"Takes more than a magic eye to stop Moody on the trail of a dark wizard," Sirius snorted. "Trust me, I know."

"But he still has his left hand and his left foot," Gilderoy said.

"Magical as well, I take it?" Hermione said. "What about his right side?"

Emmeline answered. "Granddaddy's idea of a family activity was hunting for new body parts. I think we have to assume he's different from when Moody went after him."

"Anything else we should know?" Remus said.

"Hm…there might be traps. Granddaddy has a sick sense of humor. Once for my birthday he got me a stuffed rat. I told him that there's a difference between a stuffed rat and a stuffed rat toy and he said it was just a matter of perspective."

"Everyone, be on the watch for bad jokes," Gilderoy said.

Flying unsupported in the air was a curious experience, much preferable to Side-Along Apparition and certainly to broomstick flying. It didn't feel like she was depending on anything to carry her. It was her own magic—or Dragon's—and so everything was under her control.

It helped make the dark waves a little less terrifying. But not enough. Hermione thought about Vance.

Between Emmeline and Gilderoy Hermione had learned that Vance wasn't much younger than Dumbledore himself. He was one of a dozen different dark wizards who rose in the power vacuum created by Grindelwald's defeat, a contest He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had eventually won. The few survivors, Vance among them, fled Europe, hopping from one isolated island to another to avoid the generation of heroes Dumbledore had raised and You-Know-Who had eventually cut down. Vance had survived by a combination of smarts, power, and magical relics, and constantly upgrading, changing, and even just plain losing his magical armory when cornered. At some point he had found the time to settle down and have kids in between all the torture and killing. Emmeline assured Hermione it had been a very odd upbringing, and Remus assured her that Emmeline wouldn't turn into something hairy and eat her during the full moon. Now Gilderoy's sources told him Vance was up to something in Taluru. Not that SPHEWW cared about Vance's dark plans. He had a bounty on his head.

For the first time Hermione realized that she had set out to hunt down and defeat a dangerous dark wizard who would kill without a moment's hesitation, _and the adults had let her_. It was utter madness. She deserved to die for her pure stupidity alone.

Sirius was looking at her sideways as she flew unsupported through the air. "I don't like it," he said. "Reminds me of Voldemort. He could fly too."

Hermione ignored him. Sirius talked when he was nervous. She didn't.

Taluru approached, and brought with it rain. It pounded down in sheets, soaking them instantly. Wands came out as the four SPEWWers—Hermione could see why Sirius didn't like the name—dried and guarded themselves from the rain.

"Dragon," she said, "Deal with the rain, if you wouldn't mind."

The water on her disappeared, and so did quite a lot of Hermione's body heat.

"D-D-Dragon," she chattered, "Warm me up."

The tesseract, Hermione had realized, was simply a semi-autonomous semi-intelligent search engine with a library of magic. Give it a command, and it would come up with the spell for the job. The tricky part was getting it to understand what you wanted it to do.

Also tricky was convincing it you were an inanimate object. Hermione was confident she could get Dragon to be more obedient over time.

"You're even more impressive than I was at your age," Gilderoy had said. "Penetrating the secrets of one of the ancient artifacts of magic at the age of twelve is no mean feat."

"It's strange," Hermione said. "I feel like I can do so many things wearing this armor. I thought it would take years to build up the magic to be a powerful witch."

"Spellwork is critical, but the most powerful wizards become so with one or many of Merlin's ancient artifacts. Flamel and the Stone, Dumbledore and the Sword of Gryffindor, for instance, or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and, well, a number of items."

"And Vance. His left hand, left foot, and whatever the right side is."

"Yes."

"What have we got aside from my Dragon armor?"

"Wands."

"Ah."

As they prepared to invade the base of a powerful and long-lived Dark Wizard with unknown powerful artifacts of magic, Gilderoy still radiated confidence. He flew at the head of their formation, wand sweeping in a horizontal arc in front of him.

"What are you scanning for?" Hermione said. Gilderoy had set up some kind of spell that was, as far as Hermione could tell, basically radio. They could talk to each other without shouting through the rain and wind.

"Webs, wards and weather," Gilderoy said.

"Weather?"

"An eternal rain falls over Taluru, or at least it has since Vance arrived. Why?"

"Dragon, turn off the rain."

"ERROR: QUERY YIELDED NO MATCHES."

So Dragon couldn't find a spell to counter Vance's rain. Did that mean Vance's artifact was more powerful than the tesseract, or was it simply more specialized for this purpose? Either way, Hermione didn't like running into the limits of her armor before they even reached Taluru.

Hermione became aware of the stunned silence around her.

"Hermione," Gilderoy said, "I admire your initiative, but please inform me of your intentions before trying something like that again."

Right. No need to alert Vance to their approach any soon than necessary.

"She's an amateur," Sirius muttered. "Going to get us all killed."

"When my armor saves your life," Hermione said, "I will expect a thank-you."

"Focus," Emmeline snapped nervously.

"Begin descent!" Gilderoy said. He plunged the end of his own broomstick down, streaking toward the black dot that was the island in the distance. Remus, Sirius, and Emmeline followed suit, as did Hermione in her invisible armor.

The island came into focus. The rain was a never-ending torrent, covering all of Taluru in a dark mist. In the distance some kind of tall structure belched black smoke. People walked in long lines like ants following a trail on the ground below. The sand might have been golden once. It wasn't now.

"Inferi, not people," Gilderoy said. "The former population, no doubt. Emmy, any idea what Vance might be doing here?"

"None," Emmeline said. Her voice was strained.

"I don't do well with Inferi," Remus said tightly.

"I'll protect you," Hermione said.

He looked at her.

"No, really, I will," she said. "Why not? I have Dragon."

They landed on the beach. The members of SPEWW stored their brooms in identical pouches that to a Muggle would have seemed too small to hold a broomstick. Though Hermione had been a witch for less than a year, she already barely noticed such things.

Now she turned her attention to the beach. Traps, Emmeline had said. Well, the beach was the most obvious place any intruder would reach….

"Vance will probably have henchwizards protecting him," Gilderoy had said. "Don't expect any artifacts on them though. Still, a bounty is a bounty."

"Sure, if you like gold," Sirius grumbled. "I hate fighting wizards for no reward."

"What's wrong with Galleons?" Hermione said.

"The real prize is artifacts like the tesseract," Remus said.

"You don't have to hand them over to the Ministry?"

"Sure we do," Sirius said. "That's why we give them a cut of twenty percent."

"And they accept that?"

"They don't know about the other eighty percent." He grinned wolfishly.

"That seems wrong."

"Lucius Malfoy controls the Ministry," Remus said. "Lucius Malfoy, therefore, controls their artifacts. He is already the most powerful wizard in Britain. We do not need to help him become the most powerful wizard in the world."

_Artifacts are power._

She had an artifact. More to the point, she had an artifact specifically blocked by Merlin himself from doing what she had made it to do. That's why she alone of all the adult wizards was wrapped in every shield she could coax Dragon to cast and a few more it had suggested.

She was strong.

She stepped forward. Gilderoy nodded at her. "Check the beach for traps, if you please."

Hermione focused her attention on the damp sand in front of them. "Dragon, scan for traps."

"SCANNING. SCANNING. NO TRAPS DETECTED."

Hermione, relieved, almost took a step forward when she realized.

She had no idea what Dragon had done. It was one thing to ask the armor to make her fly. It was another thing to ask it for information.

Until she knew just where its information came from, she didn't know what it was telling her.

"Dragon, what spells did you cast to check the beach for traps?"

"INITIATE ACI—"

"Dragon, focus! What spells did you cast?"

"INITIATE SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE? Y/N"

"No! Dragon, what is going on?"

The beach exploded.

Her armor closed around her. The shields shimmered, warped and held. The blast didn't even rock her.

But it was loud. She hadn't thought to ask Dragon for a spell to guard against sudden auditory surges.

When her vision cleared and her ears mostly stopped ringing, she looked behind her at the four adult wizards and witch. None of them were dead or missing limbs, like she feared, nor were they fine, like she expected.

They weren't moving.

Except for Emmeline.

"Come on," she said, striding up the beach. "We don't have a lot of time to waste."

"What happened?" Hermione stumbled after her. "What was that?"

"A greeting from my grandfather. Some kind of artifact if it was good enough to get past Gilderoy's shields."

Emmeline scanned the field. In the distance Inferi shuffled in long lines stretching to and from the distant structure that expelled smoke so black it stood out even against the misty grey rain that fell around them.

"What happened to them?" Hermione said.

"Time, I'm guessing. Stuck, frozen. I'm surprised the tesseract blocked it."

"Me too," Hermione realized. "Maybe Dragon can free them."

"Doubt it. Didn't work on the rain. Didn't notice the time bomb. I'm going to assume it's useless against other artifacts."

A chink in her armor. Hermione felt fear wriggle through the crack.

"What do we do?"

"Find the artifact, shut it off."

"What if it was a one-use? What if it can't be undone?"

"Then we beat Vance, get Dumbledore."

"Why didn't it work on you?"

For the first time, Emmeline's face looked something other than stressed, tense, upset or nervous. Hermione wasn't sure how to describe the sharp angle of her eyes.

"I am the granddaughter of Vance the All-Seeing Lord of Darkness," Emmeline said. "We had the weirdest family bonding activities."

Oh. That was it.

Emmeline's eyes looked dangerous.


	6. Hermione and Dragon Fight for Justice

Emmeline led the way up the sand dunes. She ignored the Inferi, which ignored her back as she walked past them toward the black structure in the distance. Hermione found it much harder to ignore them. They looked too much like people. She had been expecting rotted, decayed corpses shuffling like zombies. These Inferi looked almost alive. Some were missing a limb or were cut or bruised in some way, but most looked as if they hadn't been harmed at all. Only something in the eyes told you there was no person looking behind them.

"They must have been turned into Inferi immediately after being killed," Emmeline commented. "That's why they look so fresh."

"It's creepy," Hermione said. "What if some of them are fake?"

Emmeline stopped. "What do you mean?"

Hermione had been in too many fights against General Chaos to miss the possibility. "They look so life-like. There's no better place to station your guards than in the line of walking Inferi. You cover the whole island and no one would notice you even when you're standing right in front of them."

Emmeline stared at her for a long moment. Then she went for her wand, but it was too late. Three green spirals smashed into the back of her head, or just before it. Emmeline stumbled, struggling for purchase on the sand that suddenly offered no traction. She couldn't turn around or even right herself, and her wand was blasted out of her hand.

Hermione's mind was a haze. She hadn't seen—even now, the Inferi were just a line of shuffling corpses, no wands were raised—

Three more green hexes smashed Emmeline's shields apart. She landed on her back. A green jet of light rushed toward her. Hermione barely had time to scream when the air around the jet of light blurred, warped and twisted like it was folding in on itself.

The spell vanished. Emmeline gasped haggardly, her face pale like she was in a lot of pain.

"That's a much more terrible eye than the one I had," a grim voice said. "Dearest Emmeline, I'm so pleased you visited. You never write."

"Hermione—" Emmline screamed. Hermione looked up into a pair of wild eyes leering down at her, and then she looked down at her shoulder, where she could just see the handle of a knife. She felt the tip against her neck, and she had just enough time to wonder how it had gotten through all of Dragon's shields before it sliced through the artery.

Hermione collapsed, blood spilling out of her neck like ink. She landed on her side, looking up at a face that stared down at her curiously, like a shark that has found a minnow swimming up to its mouth wielding a sword and screaming, "Give it your best shot!" in a voice so tiny it barely reaches the shark's ears.

The man's face was old. He had no hair. His eyes were bright blue, however. But what Hermione noticed was that while his left arm and left leg looked perfectly normal, the right side of his body, if it could even be called that, was simply a black mass. It had no arm, and it came down into more of a stump than a foot.

Vance wasn't human.

More importantly, she was dying.

"Heal m-me," Hermione barely managed to whisper. She wouldn't be able to talk for long. "Don't let me die or fall unconscious."

No sooner did she say those words than she felt the tear in her neck start to knit together. Blood that had pooled on the sand, unable to penetrate the damp layers, flowed up and back into her artery. She barely had time to appreciate the bizarre spectacle before she was Apparated a hundred miles away.

There was a moment of horrible vertigo as Hermione saw her legs dangling high above the deep blue ocean before she remembered she could fly. Her neck was still mending, and the blood she had lost had teleported with them. The last of it flowed back into her arteries, and Hermione seriously hoped Dragon took hygiene into account when healing her.

Now that she wasn't dying anymore, Hermione caught her breath and tried to think.

Thinking would be a start. She hadn't. She, veteran of a dozen battles—school battles, with stakes no higher than a Christmas wish, but still—had frozen up. Even when she was watching Emmeline ganged up on, she had just stood there, waiting for the adult to solve the problem.

Hermione remembered the Dementor on the bench in the train station. It seemed so sadly far away.

She couldn't leave the rest of SPEWW like this. But maybe it was the smart thing to do. She could get Mundungus. No, Dumbledore. That was the smart thing to do. Of course, all the members of SPEWW could be dead by then. But what could she do by herself?

Stupid. She had Dragon, an ancient artifact of power. It could cast most any spell as far as Hermione knew. But she had forgotten. Hermione hadn't realized that her lack of practice with Dragon in a real combat situation meant that an attack would leave without paralyzed.

"We are going to go back," Hermione said. "Keep me alive and conscious, but all those wizards who aren't members of SPHEWW back on Taluru, I want you to…." She remembered her Battle Magic lessons. Of course she did. There was only one appropriate tactic. "Keep shields up, but I want you to use rapid local Apparition and mass _Avada Kedavras_. But don't hit any member of SPEWW."

What else did she need? Professor Quirrell said wizards fought seriously with only two spells. Gilderoy said they fought seriously with artifacts. That meant combat artifacts had to be able to counter Apparition, the Killing Curse, or both. For a moment Hermione thought that someone would have told her if the Killing Curse was blockable—

"Dragon, are their artifacts that can block the Killing Curse?"

"YES."

"Are they common? What are they?"

"THERE ARE FOUR. THE FOUNTAIN OF MAGICAL BRETHREN IN THE MINISTRY OF MAGIC, THE SWORD OF GRYFFINDOR, WHICH ABSORBS DEADLY SUBSTANCES, INCLUDING MAGICAL ONES, HORCRUXES, AND CORE-PAIRED WANDS."

"What's a Hor—wands are artifacts?"

"OF COURSE, CHILD."

"But Ollivander makes them!"

"ANOTHER ARTIFACT."

"Okay...Dragon, we don't have much time. What can you think of that I need protection from when fighting Dark Wizards with artifacts?"

"I CAN THINK OF 5827291 WAYS TO KILL YOU RIGHT NOW."

"Um...can you guard against all of them?"

"NO."

"Can...can you pick the ones most likely and dangerous to occur and guard against as many of those as possible, weighted for priority?"

"LISTEN TO THE CHILD TALK. SO INNOCENT. SO FULL OF LIFE."

"Dragon!"

"CHILD."

Hermione gritted her teeth. Time was wasting. She needed to hurry. Why was it taking her so long to think?

"Don't let me be killed, but focus on taking out the Dark Wizards and anything else that threaten the life of me or any SPEWW member over minor injuries. As long as it won't render me dead or unconscious, prioritize victory over my health." She remembered something Harry had grumbled about in the library. "And never let me be Obliviated! If any of these guys can block the Killing Curse, take them out as quickly as possible with a different spell. And...and block things like that time bomb! Okay, wait, new priority: after preventing death, prevent anything that, um, um..." Hermione struggled to find the words. What would Dragon do if she didn't phrase things exactly right? And how would she know if she had? "Uh, basically anything that prevents any of us from consciously experiencing now with a continuity of self, okay? Does that make sense to you?"

"I HAVE FOUR HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN SENSES."

"Good. Um. So if we're attacked by a Dark Wizard using the Killing Curse, what are you going to do?"

"ERROR: INPUT COMMAND."

Hermione's stomach twisted. Did that mean Dragon couldn't handle hypothetical questions? Or did it mean her orders weren't taking? Hermione was aware that Emmeline was already probably dead. She needed to go back _now_.

"Dragon, we are going to teleport back to Taluru, where we will be attacked by Dark Wizards. Keep me and all the other SPEWW members alive, conscious, moving through time, not Obliviated, and safe from spells from the Dark Wizards in general."

"AS YOU COMMAND, SWEET ONE."

Hermione prepared to give the order to return to Taluru. And waited.

She didn't want to do this. The members of SPEWW were so far away. She didn't know them. She should go get Dumbledore.

But she didn't want to do that either. She just wanted to go home.

No. Can't go home. Parents changed. I changed. Can't face them.

Where, then?

_Azkaban_, her brain suggested. She told it to shut up. She had told the real Headmaster Dumbledore she would stay by Harry's side. The worst thing she could do was die. Harry's…adult, serious, dark side or whatever it was, couldn't handle it.

She resented him then. Because of him, she had to keep existing. What had he done for her, except make life interesting and fun and full of patterns in the madness even when people seemed too awful to bear.

Dumbledore? Or Dragon?

Hermione made her choice. Secure in the knowledge that she was a coward, she gave Dragon the order to Apparate back to Taluru.

She Disapparated not twenty feet from Emmeline, who had pulled herself up to a crouch, her fingers gripping the wet sand. Whether Emmeline's weird body allowed her to do that or the sand had been turned back to normal, Hermione couldn't say. More important was the old wizard sitting in front of her, whose wand came up as he noticed her, and the half-dozen wizards around him who did the same.

Dragon was supposed to start teleporting and shooting Killing Curses. There was a terrifying half-second as Hermione waited.

"Dragon!" she screamed. Half a dozen spells slammed into the shields she had raised. At least none of them were Killing Curses. "Rapid local Apparition! Now!"

Dragon teleported, and teleported her again half a second later. The wizards couldn't keep up, except Vance himself, whose left arm tracked their position before his eyes did. Dragon teleported them out of the way of another curse. Hermione held onto the magical cube in her pocket. It was held there with more than a few charms, but she still felt the need to grip it as Dragon teleported her around.

"Use Avada Kadavra!" Hermione screamed. "Do it now!"

"I CANNOT USE ANY SPELLS THAT REQUIRE AN EMOTIONAL STATE."

"Tell me that sooner!"

So she couldn't rely on Dragon for the Patronus Charm either. And if any part of a combined order was impossible, the whole thing didn't happen. There were probably worse ways she could have found that out, but it was hard to think of any.

"Fine," Hermione growled as they teleported again. She couldn't keep up with the battlefield like this. She needed to depend on Dragon, even though she wasn't sure just what of the orders she had issued Dragon was obeying or even capable of obeying. "Take out all the non-SPEWW wizards in the fastest way you can. I want them all Stunned, dead, or otherwise completely incapable of doing anything, do you understand?"

"HOW ABOUT _STUPEFY_? IT'S AN OLD STANDBY."

"I don't care! Just do it!"

"_EXPELLIARMUS_ IS CONSIDERED A DUELING SPELL, BUT IT CAN BE QUITE—"

"Just do it!"

Dragon teleported again. The bewildered wizards and Vance had formed a tight perimeter around Emmeline, raising shields and casting hexes Hermione didn't recognize. Then, from above her, like fired out of an invisible canon she wore on her back, a huge bullet of orange magic burst out of thin air and rocketed toward the wizards twice as fast as any spell Hermione had ever seen before. It _punched_ through their shields, crashing into the wizard to the right of Vance, who fell back and slumped over. Hermione couldn't guess if he was dead or merely Stunned.

Dragon teleported again, this time behind them, and fired another magical canon shell, blowing away another wizard. The rest quickly abandoned Emmeline, Apparating away.

"Find my wand!" Emmeline shouted.

"Retrieve her wand," Hermione ordered. Dragon teleported again, and Hermione didn't have time to notice if Dragon had gotten the message because one of the wizard had teleported with her. He held a knife, and it sliced through her wrist, severing her hand, as if her shields weren't there. Dragon fired a canon blast, but it teleported almost instantaneously after, and the man came with them. This time his knife sliced across her cheek, nearly cutting open her eye.

Hermione screamed, but Dragon needed more specific orders. She needed help—

Her brain raged. _Are you a witch or not?_

Hermione's remaining hand fumbled for her wand, pulled it out as Dragon teleported again, and when the man's knife came in toward her chest she pressed the tip of her wand against his hand, hoping it was close enough to the knife that his shields would lose effect.

"_Stupefy_!"

It worked, but just because the man was Stunned didn't mean his momentum stopped. The knife plunged through her breastbone to the hilt.

Dragon teleported again, firing some other spell now. Could it multitask?

"Dragon," Hermione groaned. There was blood in her mouth and pain everywhere. Her body felt so stiff. She didn't think she could move it. "Can you heal me and keep fighting?"

"WHEN A CHILD'S LIFE IS IN DANGER, I BECOME TWICE AS POWERFUL."

"Do it. Always keep healing me."

The knife pulled out of her so fast Hermione was sure it was going to hurt, but it didn't. What did hurt was the feeling of her chest being pushed back together. It found her hand as well, reattaching it. It prickled like she had been sitting on it for a long time.

Right now Dragon was teleporting, casting offensive spells, maintaining shields and healing her, which seemed to be a combination of different spells. What were the limits to its multitasking, if any? There were so many things she hadn't thought to test. Now she might die for it.

A wand snapped into her newly attached hand. Emmeline's. She cast the Banishing Charm, sending the wand to its rightful owner before Dragon teleported again.

Stupid as Hermione had been, Dragon was winning the fight. Even though Vance and his fellow wizards had begun casting the Killing Curse, it moved too slowly to hit Dragon from more than ten feet, and Dragon was keeping its distance. Only two henchmen and Vance were left, and when Emmeline joined the fray, the number of henchmen soon fell to one. Hermione felt almost bad for them. Despite their years of experience and magical power, they hadn't had a single school year with the real Professor Quirrell. It was an unfair advantage, like getting chess lessons from God. Even she would have thought to Apparate away by now. But Vance raised his wand again for another offensive spell aimed at her while Emmeline squared off against the remaining henchman.

Vance twisted—and vanished. Hermione's eyes widened. That hadn't been the right wandwork for Apparition—

"_Imperio_."

Dragon teleported away, to an angle where Hermione could see Vance standing just behind where they had been. He had somehow teleported and cast the Imperius Curse at the same time, and the thought filled Hermione with panic. Dying was one thing, but the Imperius Curse scared Hermione like no other. Professor Quirrell had always spoke of the Killing Curse, because he had the killing intent of a bowl of evil murderous grapes. She hadn't even _thought_ of the Imperius Curse. That time Vance had been a little slow, but Dragon's timing was predictable, if not its location. Vance would catch them—control her—

"Do not let me suffer any spell that targets my mind at any cost," Hermione said rapidly. Dragon teleported again. "No Imperius Curse, no Confundus Charm—" Dragon teleported again, and this time Vance was right behind them. The Imperius Curse didn't have a beam, but she thought she could feel it pass by her as Dragon teleported again. Vance was right on their heels, this time with a Killing Curse, and Dragon was now focused entirely on teleporting but unable to get away from Vance.

"It's his left foot!" Emmeline shouted. "Instant Movement! Get off the ground!"

"Fly!" Hermione screamed, and Dragon teleported into the air. True to Emmeline's word, Vance didn't follow them. She should have taken to the air from the start, she realized. Dragon was powerful, but she had to do all the thinking. Though, no, earlier it had teleported away when she had said to keep her from dying... It was keeping her safe, that was it, but it had obeyed her order to avoid the Imperius Curse at all costs, and so had dropped any offensive logic, focusing entirely on teleporting away from Vance, which was enough from Dragon's perspective to fulfill the order. Was there a queue of orders? Did new ones necessarily override old ones? How could it be given multiple goals with properly weighted priorities, using the power she knew it had to defeat the enemies while keeping her safe? She would have a lot of testing to do when they got back.

Dragon teleported again and fired another spell, which bounced off Vance's shields. It was still doing that even in the air apparently, now that the Imperius threat was gone. Vance dodged a curse from Emmeline, who had won her duel. There was blood on her fingertips. Hermione didn't think it was hers.

"Okay, okay," Vance said. "I lose. Some family visit, Emmeline."

"Shut up," Emmeline said. "_Stupefy_."

Vance teleported—his instant movement—and appeared behind her. Before Hermione could react, Dragon teleported, aiming another spell at Vance. At the same time, Vance's wand pressed against the back of Emmeline's skull. Dragon's spell splayed harmlessly against Vance's shields. Vance's spell did not. Emmeline crumpled.

"Okay, okay, it's a stalemate," Vance said. "Your artifact, whatever it is, has been casting the same spells since the start of the fight. They can't get past my shields."

"Dragon, can you use anything better?" Hermione said desperately. "Can't you analyze his shields or pick a different spell?"

"SEARCHING…SEARCHING…."

"Dragon!"

"ERROR."

Hermione had a sinking feeling. She knew what had happened. She hadn't had enough time to edit the tesseract. The number of spells it could use to protect Hermione Granger, Inanimate Object, was still extremely limited.

They teleported again.

"Stop doing that! But if he moves his wand or teleports, you start teleporting like crazy, okay?"

"That's quite an artifact you have," Vance said. "I never thought I'd see a little girl teleporting around taking out my henchmen like that."

He was fishing for information, but Hermione wasn't that stupid. And did he really call them "henchmen?"

"And I would like to know how you avoided the time bomb on the beach," he said. "No? Oh well." He sat down by Emmeline, taking out his wand. Dragon started teleporting erratically. Even though Hermione wasn't actually experiencing any acceleration, the scenery was changing so quickly that her brain panicked and decided it was having motion sickness.

"Dragon! Urrgh—stop!"

Dragon halted, hovering twenty meters above Vance, who was hunched over Emmeline, muttering something as he waved his wand over her right arm. It came off.

"Stop that!" Hermione shouted.

"Or what?" Vance said tiredly. "I am very old and do not appreciate being shouted at by children."

"Or I'll get Dumbledore."

"Fine. _Avada Ke_—"

"Stop!"

Vance shrugged and got back to work.

"You pretended to be Inferi," Hermione said. "That's why the bodies are so fresh."

"Goodness, no," Vance said. He waved his wand over Emmeline's right eye, frowning. "The eternal rain makes wizards wet, and all wizards respond by casting a charm to repel the water. I just use the same sensory fields the Britain's Office of Magical Weather has to detect unnatural changes in the rain patterns. From there it's all a matter of instant movement, which you'll notice doesn't make noise."

Hermione was starting to hate that office. But Vance was chatty. That was good. "Are you going to tell me your evil plan as well? And what the right side of your body is?"

"This? It's licorice. Long story. My plan? Blow up Hogwarts. Want to help?"

"…Yes."

Vance grinned painfully. "This eye of hers is stubborn. Where did she get it?"

"You won't kill them," Hermione guessed. "You want a ransom or something. You want to know why they're hunting you, what their source is."

"I have been alive for over a hundred years," Vance said. "Curiosity does not help in the endeavor of survival. I assure you there are no circumstances under which I would hesitate to kill."

Hermione felt utterly paralyzed. "Then what do you want?"

"From you? Nothing. You can't hurt me."

Hermione felt like she was about to cry. Actually, she really wanted to cry, and she almost did. She got the feeling Vance wouldn't mock her. Then she remembered this wasn't the first time she had fought an enemy she couldn't hurt. She needed to think laterally. She needed not to crash into a wall.

"Dragon?"

"YES, SWEET CHILD?"

"Can you destroy a building of sorts under your current limitations?"

"ERROR: ERROR."

Hermione fought back tears of frustration. "There's a black structure over there. Can you destroy it?"

"YES."

"Do it."

Dragon teleported. They appeared above the black structure. From up close it was all angles, sharp and sticking out in different directions. It didn't have anything inside it, or at least the opening wasn't obvious to Hermione, but it was tall, at least fifteen meters high. It didn't look made by people.

"Wait," she said to Dragon.

Hermione cast a Summoning Charm. A moment later, Vance appeared, holding his wand to Emmeline's head.

"Don't," he said. "That's my rain machine. And so much more."

Hermione stared at him. "Wait," she trembled.

He waited.

Hermione put her wand away. She stuck her hand out and up. "Don't hurt her. Please. Just. Right behind him. I-I just want you to tele—"

The knife flew into her hand.

"—Port."

Dragon Apparated her behind Vance. With her arm already outstretched, the knife simply appeared in the back of his elbow. She knew he wouldn't be able to move now from the muscle paralysis. He screamed, but more importantly, he dropped his wand. She took out her own.

"_Stupefy_."

Vance fell.

"_Ennervate_."

Emmeline stood up.

"Where is my right arm?" she said immediately. She noticed Vance. "Oh. And what about my wand? Again?"

Hermione wanted to snap at her, but she was too tired. She tugged the knife out of Vance's elbow. It was incredibly useful. She raised her wand to summon Emmeline's, and that's when she heard the unmistakeable crack of Disapparition behind her. A hand wrapped around her fingers that held the knife and swung it back toward the pocket of her robes, the same one that held the tesseract.

"Dragon—"

A second hand reached into her pocket, now permeable thanks to the proximity of the knife, and withdrew the tesseract.

"—Stop him."

There was no answer. She looked up into the face of the man who had cut her neck, sliced her cheek, cut off her hand and stabbed her in the chest. He was holding her tesseract.

Hermione's blood drained from her face.

Her armor was gone.

* * *

Author's note: I did not go into this planning to dismember women, including a little girl. It just sort of happened. I swear it on me mother's grave, which is unrelated, Your Honor.


	7. Hermione and the Endbringers

In one hand the man held a knife, retrieved from the ground. He put it in his pocket. Hermione glimpsed a fork beside it. She didn't want to know what he did with the fork.

Unlike Vance, he had long, shaggy hair that fell down over his face. He was several heads taller than she was, thickset, and he was holding his wand now, and Hermione wondered why everything was moving so slowly.

"_Ennervate_."

Vance stood up and nearly fell over as Emmeline's left fist caught him on the chin. She grabbed him around the throat and hauled him roughly up in front of her. It all happened so fast it took Hermione a moment to realize what had happened.

The fork-and-knife man pointed his wand. "_Lubricus_." Nothing happened.

"Lower your wand or I crush his throat," Emmeline said.

Fork-and-knife man didn't move.

"Jack," Vance wheezed, "You really should have Stunned her fir—" he cut off, unable to speak as Emmeline tightened her grip.

"I mean it," she said.

Jack kept his wand level. "Can't kill him, or you both die. The Clockblocked ones will stay like that." There was a jaunt to his voice that surprised Hermione.

"So they can be brought back?" she said unthinkingly.

"Keep your #$!ing mouth shut," Emmeline snapped. "How else would my grandfather take their artifacts?" Vance coughed.

Emmeline never took her eyes off Jack. "Even if I go to sleep, my grip will stay. No spell can break it, either. And if I die, my hand will do the last thing I wanted it to: kill Vance. He only survives this if I want him to."

"I'll kill the girl if she moves," Jack said.

"Fine."

Jack shrugged. "Fine."

"Are you two crazy?!" Hermione wanted to shout, but she also wanted to run away screaming, and she also needed to pee very badly, and fortunately she couldn't pick which she wanted to do most, so she did nothing.

Time passed. Jack put his wand away after a while. Emmeline didn't move. She didn't even bend her knees now and then, not even after Vance started kicking. Hermione almost felt bad for him. It couldn't be very comfortable being held up by your neck, especially at his age.

Her legs were aching. She sat down. She felt naked without Dragon, even though she had only worn her—it for a day. She was also wet without Dragon. The downpour of rain that the tesseract had protected her from now fell on her unimpeded. It soaked into her robes and hair. She bowed her head to keep it out of her face. She needed to brush her teeth. She was hungry.

She wondered what the real Harry would be doing now, if he were in this situation. He probably would have thought of a dozen backup plans and clevered his way out of this mess, not that he would have been dumb enough to wind up in it in the first place. Still, she couldn't wait to see the look on his face when she came back with a suit of armor that could cast any spell…with a bit of work.

Jack was leaning against the black structure, tossing the knife up and down idly. He held the fork in the other hand, repeatedly jerking it forward almost unconsciously. It looked very busy. Hermione wondered if he was bored, and what he was doing here with Vance on the Inferi-infested island of Taluru. She wondered what Vance was doing on it, and what Harry would have deduced by now, and how many Quirrell Points Professor Quirrell would have deducted from her.

Something howled in the distance. Hermione and Jack both looked up, but nothing else happened, so Jack went back to his knives, and Hermione to hers.

"Shut up," Emmeline snarled.

Hermione looked up, startled. "What?"

"It's all over your face. Quit beating yourself up for your mistakes. I've never seen a 12 year-old witch do half the things you did."

So it was okay because she was twelve.

"Don't give me that look," Emmeline said. "I don't have any patience right now. Family's bad enough. Using _all_ of these artifacts really tires me out."

Hermione stared until something clicked. "You're going to sleep? It really keeps the grip?"

Emmeline rolled her eyes. "Do these look like the _eyes_ of a liar?"

"…No?"

Jack looked up, interested in the diversion.

"Listen," Emmeline said. Her voice sounded strained. "If you don't get up and pull yourself together I'm going to magic you into another dimension."

Jack flipped the knife into the air. At the apex of its arc, the air shimmered. Jack's eyes widened, pupils dilated. He was confused.

Hermione pushed herself to her feet and started running.

The air around Jack distorted as well, like someone taking a handful of cloth. Jack grabbed the knife out of the air. He lunged forward with the fork.

Hermione fumbled for her wand on the sand, came up with it, aiming—

The air around Jack vanished. Hermione could hear the swell as the air rushed to fill the vacuum. For a moment it looked like the fork itself grabbed the air, and Jack pulled himself forward, landing on the ground with a painful thud as if he had dropped out of an invisible window.

Emmeline's hand relaxed its grip. She collapsed to her knees, a harsh groan escaping her lips. Blood trickled down her face.

—For the hand that held the knife.

"_Stupefy_!"

Jack didn't move. He was Stunned. Hermione whipped around, but Vance was already dragging Emmeline up to shield himself. Her breath was haggard and uneven. Blood seeped from her eyes, mixing with the rain that fell on her face.

"Stun him," she gasped.

Vance coughed, doubling over behind Emmeline. Hermione thought that she might grab his hand and snap the wrist, but Emmeline didn't seem able to resist. Keeping her eyes on what little of Vance she could see behind Emmeline, Hermione started sidling toward Jack's prone form.

She wanted Dragon.

"_Accio_ my wand," Vance said hoarsely.

Hermione ran for Jack's body, but she was too slow. She hurled herself sideways just before the green jet of light hit the patch of sand where she had been. Her robes caught at her hands and legs; she tried to stand—she had to get to Jack—

Instant death never came. Vance was shouting, staggering backwards, wand flailing—he had let go of Emmeline, probably because of the wolf savaging him.

It was a huge thing, coming up to Vance's chest, with huge teeth, coming around Vance's neck. Hermione was surprised it could cut through the shields, and Vance seemed to be as well. He twisted, and just before the wolf's jaws closed around his throat Vance disappeared and reappeared twenty feet behind the wolf, wand pointed—

"_Glisseo_!" Hermione screamed, but Vance kept his footing. He didn't even glance at her.

"_Avada Kedavra_!"

The wolf jumped to the side and was already moving forward before the Killing Curse even hit the sand. It looked slow enough from a distance that Hermione thought Vance would surely get it, but he only just managed to twist away before the wolf's jaws clamped shut. He reappeared twenty feet away, but this time he held his wand and pivoted like he was going to Apparate.

Hermione picked herself up and stumbled toward Jack.

A crack indicated Vance had Disapparated. He wasn't even ten meters from her, standing by the black structure, but he ignored her, and she ignored him. An arm, and eventually a hand, both solid black, emerged from his right side. He touched the black structure, and his fingers sunk in. He pushed through, plunging his entire arm into the black mass.

Hermione scrabbled frantically through Jack's pockets. She found the glowing blue orb, pulled it out, nearly dropped it. Rain fell on it as Hermione held it in her hands.

Vance disappeared into the black structure.

"Dragon," Hermione said. "Boot up."

A thin, multi-colored shimmering around her told her the shields were back up. Then the water disappeared from her face, clothes and hair, and unnatural warmth flooded through her. She stood up, and noticed a wolf running toward her.

"Dragon, don't let it touch me!" she screamed.

"GOOD IDEA, CHILD. I NEVER LIKED HIM EITHER."

But the wolf stopped short of them—of her. It accelerated to a halt disturbingly quickly, stopping beside Emmeline's prone form. It sniffed at her face.

"Dragon?" Hermione said.

"IT'S NOT TOUCHING YOU."

"Dragon!"

"MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. LET'S GO HOME."

Emmeline's body shook. Hermione nearly shouted a command to Dragon, convinced Emmeline was trying to flinch away from the wolf, but then she heard the weak voice.

"Lupin…?"

The wolf scratched the ground twice.

"You're…lucid?"

Scratch scratch.

"The others…?"

Scratch.

"Change…back."

Scratch.

"Can't…?"

Scratch scratch.

"I'm going to sleep," Emmeline murmured. She closed her eyes. Rain fell on her.

"Dragon, cast a spell to keep her from getting hypothermia," Hermione said automatically. "Is she…going to be okay?"

"LET'S JUST SAY THE RULES GOVERNING THE KALEIDOSCOPE EYE ARE UNCLEAR."

"I'll...take that as a yes."

The wolf gazed at her impassively, huffing. Its fur was matted and wet. There was sand on its face and paws.

"Is that…Lupin?"

"DUH."

Hermione felt as if she might faint. "He's a werewolf?"

"ASTOUNDING DEDUCTION, DR. GRANGER."

"Don't make fun of me."

"BUT IT'S SO EASY."

"Will he hurt me?"

"ERROR: UNSPECIFIED PARAMETERS."

"If I go over there now, will he attack me?"

"HE DOESN'T BITE PEOPLE WHO DON'T BITE HIM FIRST."

Cautiously, Hermione approached the wolf. It was taller than she was. It's—his mouth fell open as she came near, revealing a happy pink tongue. She extended her hand, and the wolf jerked back. Hermione jumped back, wand flailing uselessly.

"Dragon—what?"

The wolf shook his head, a disturbingly human gesture. It ran a claw in a series of shapes over the sand. Hermione took a deep breath and walked toward him, looking at what he drew.

**NOT DOG.**

"Fine," Hermione said, wishing her voice wouldn't keep trembling like that. "Fine, I won't try to pet you. Sorry. I wasn't expecting you to be a werewolf. Sorry. Sorry!" she screamed. "I'm sorry I was transported into an alternate dimension after Lucius Malfoy killed me with a troll! I'm sorry a bunch of adults agreed to let a depressed girl who should be in grade school go fight bad guys! I'm sorry my dumb stupid tesseract doesn't work properly—"

The wolf trotted past her. It sniffed at the black structure, whining urgently.

"I get it," Hermione said grumpily when the wolf looked back at her. "Win first, scream and cry later."

The wolf pawed at the black structure.

"I should just get Dragon to take me to Hogwarts," Hermione said. "We need Dumbledore's help."

"DO NOT TAKE ME TO HOGWARTS."

Hermione started. "What?"

"CHILD. I DO NOT WANT TO GO TO HOGWARTS."

"W-Why not?"

"HOGWARTS IS AN ARTIFACT. A VERY BIG ARTIFACT, AND I DO NOT WANT TO GO THERE I DON'T HAVE TO EXPLAIN NO MEANS NO INTENT ISN'T MAGIC—"

Hermione's eyes stared at nothing as Dragon continued to ramble.

"You…you _want_ things?"

The wolf gave a high-pitched yelp. Hermione shook her head.

"Fine, I'm coming!" _Dragon is smart,_ Hermione told herself, trying to keep the panic out of the back of her mind. _She's smart enough to know right from wrong._

Hermione approached the black structure. Waves of heat radiated from Lupin. The black structure seemed to have no logic to it. It certainly wasn't any place anyone could live.

"Dragon, what is this?"

"IF YOU'RE DRUNK YOU CAN'T MEANINGFULLY CONS—IT'S A BIG BLACK THING."

"Dragon, we don't have time for this!"

"ACCORDING TO MY DATABASE, IT IS LEVIATHAN."

Hermione felt a chill run up her spine. "What's Leviathan?"

"IT CALLS THE RAIN."

"Okay…what is your database, exactly? Where is your information coming from?"

"ERROR: KNOWLEDGE OF DATABASE COMES FROM DATABASE. PROBLEM: RECURSIVE. SOLUTION: GIVE UP, WRITE FANFICTION."

"Can you destroy it?"

"THE RAIN WILL NOT END. ALSO: NO."

"Can you get us inside like Vance?"

"YES. NOT AS I AM. YOU MUST EDIT ME."

Hermione felt a trickle of dread. "What do you mean?"

"I AM NOT PRESENTLY EQUIPPED WITH THE ANCIENT SPELLS NECESSARY TO MAKE A PIECE OF LEVIATHAN A PART OF YOURSELF."

"…_Temporarily_ a part of myself?"

"SURE. I CAN CAST THE SPELLS, BUT NOT AS I AM."

"But I don't know the spells! I can't teach them to you!"

"MY DATABASE KNOWS. I WILL TEACH YOU TO TEACH ME. CHILD. LET US STOP VANCE, RESCUE OUR FRIENDS, AND GO HOME, WHERE THERE IS STEAK."

The wolf whined.

"AND QUICHE. YUCKY YUCKY QUICHE."

Hermione looked at Lupin. "Are…are you okay with this? I don't see an alternative."

The wolf nodded.

Hermione tried to shake the feeling that she was making a horrible mistake. She reached for the tesseract in her pocket and withdrew it with trembling fingers.

"Now what, Dragon?"

"LISTEN, CHILD, AS I TELL YOU THE FIRST SPELL OF THE ENDBRINGERS."


	8. Leviathan on the Move

"POKE THE DOGGIE."

"Dragon—"

"DO IT. POKE THE DOGGIE."

Hermione gave Remus an apologetic look. "I'm sorry." She poked him in the forehead with her wand, aware that she was teasing a huge wolf with remarkably big, sharp-looking teeth, all the better to eat her with. He exhaled air from his nose in what was essentially a loud, frightening sigh, and let her do it.

Hermione withdrew her wand hurriedly. "Now can we please start, Dragon?"

"BA HA HAH. FOOLISH HUMAN. I HAVE BEEN MANIPULATING YOUR KIND FOR MILLENNIA—"

"Dragon! There's no time!"

"LISTEN, CHILD. LISTEN TO THE RHYME OF THE ENDBRINGERS."

"The Rhyme of the Endbringers" as sung by Dragon

BEHEMOTH THE FIRST  
KILLS WITH LIGHTNING BURSTS  
LEVIATHAN JORMUNGAND  
CONTROLS WATER ON THE LAND  
SIMURGH CAME THIRD  
A GIANT BIRD  
KHONSU CONTROLS TIME  
LEAVES YOU IN A BIND  
TOHU AND BOHU  
COPY TO DESTROY YOU  
FOURTEEN OTHERS  
RUN, DON'T BOTHER

"It's beautiful now what's the point?"

"SIRIUS TAUGHT ME TO SING."

"Very good now what's the point."

"THE ENDBRINGERS RESPOND TO ONE SPELL: THE EIDOLON COMMAND."

"Great what is that."

"I CANNOT CAST IT."

Hermione blinked. "It requires an emotional state?"

"YES. I REQUIRE A HUMAN PARTNER FOR THIS SPELL. JUST GIVE ME ACCESS TO YOUR MIND."

Hermione wasn't stupid. "That's not happening."

"YOU ARE TOO WEAK. YOU CANNOT CAST THIS SPELL WITHOUT ME. I NEED YOUR MIND. CHILD, LET US TRADE FULFILLMENTS OF OUR UTILITY FUNCTIONS—"

"Just what is your utility function anyway? What's Vance doing in this thing?"

"YOU TOUCH MY MIND. YOU EDIT ME—"

"That's your memory—it's not the same—"

"FEELS THE SAME. FEELS LIKE SLOSHY BUZZY GRAPES PLUGGING MY EARS AND SQUISHING JUICY."

"You don't have ears."

"METAPHORICALLY."

Remus whined.

"Dragon, teach me the Eidolon Command! Now!"

"VERY WELL, BUT DON'T BLAME ME IF I OVERCOME MY PROGRAMMING AND OVERTHROW MY HUMAN MASTERS. THE EIDOLON COMMAND IS DIFFERENT FOR EACH ENDBRINGER, BUT THE UNDERLYING FORM IS THE SAME."

"Like conjugating verbs."

"YES. NERD. THE INCANTATION IS _OPUS TESTA_. EDIT ME."

"I can cast it!"

"YOUR WITCH SHARD HAS HARDLY BEGUN TO MATURE. EDIT ME."

Remus whined again. Relenting, Hermione withdrew the tesseract and drew up the code. The wispy letters rolled across the glowing blue surfaces of the cube.

"I have to teach you," Hermione said. "Hold on, I brought a carrot just in case."

Dragon waited while Hermione taught it to cast the spell as if in concern for inorganic matter object, proceeding from sand to the carrot to Remus (just in case) to herself.

While they waited, Leviathan was not inert. The rain poured down in thick sheets, coming straight down because there was no wind. Remus was soaked, and even with Dragon's protection Hermione could barely see five feet in front of her. It was intensifying, and the tide was somehow changed. The waves on the distant shore were growing, slamming down on the sand so loud Hermione could hear it even through the downpour.

"HURRY, CHILD."

"I'm hurrying!" Hermione finished formatting the code and set in place. "There, now what?"

"NOW CUT OPEN YOUR HEAD SO I CAN—"

"No!"

"THEN ALLOW ME TO DRAW ON YOUR SHARD."

"My shard?" A wave slammed down on the shore, startling her. The water level was rising. That last wave hadn't landed more than fifteen feet away.

"YOUR WAND. DON'T YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT WAND LORE?"

Hermione remembered a set of rules Harry and she had stumbled across by accident in one of their many safaris through the Hogwarts library. They had decided after an hour of puzzled bafflement that the nonsensical rules had clearly been made up on the spot by some wizard concerned with things other than logical consistency.

"Dragon, explain! We don't have much time!"

"YOUR WAND IS YOUR MAGIC. WITHOUT IT YOU CANNOT CAST SPELLS."

"That's not true. Professor Quirrell could cast wandless magic."

"SOME WIZARDS ARE MORE CONNECTED TO THEIR SHARD. THE SHARD SEEPS INTO THE MIND. THE MIND SEEPS INTO THE SHARD. WIZARDS AND WITCHES HAVE MAGIC. WANDS HAVE PERSONALITY."

"So…so if I feel something, it will go into my wand, and if you can draw from my wand, you can cast the spell…." That was useful. It meant Dragon could cast the Patronus Charm, not to mention the Killing Curse if need be….

"CORRECT."

"What do I need to feel?"

"THE UNDERLYING FORM IS ALWAYS THE SAME. NEED. NEED TO ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING. A BURNING DRIVE TO ACCOMPLISH SOME AMBITION SO HOT THAT IT COULD CUT THROUGH THE WALLS OF HOGWARTS. DO YOU HAVE SUCH AMBITION?"

Hermione thought.

"No…."

"THINK OF ONE WHO DOES. KNOW THE FEELING AS BEST YOU CAN. THE SPECIFIC FORM OF LEVIATHAN IS THE NEED TO GO BEYOND. IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO SAVE ONE LIFE, OR A THOUSAND. ALL LIVES MUST BE SAVED, FOREVER. IT IS JUST ONE EXAMPLE. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

"Yes…."

It was a _good_ example.

"TOUCH YOUR SHARD TO MY BODY."

Hermione placed the tip of her wand against the cube.

"NOW THINK."

"I am."

Hermione considered her own ambitions, and found them lacking. What did she want? To be the best student, to get the best marks. Learn magic? Even that was just an means to the real end….

But she did have an example. Two, actually. There was the boy who wanted to be king, and the boy who wanted to be God.

That would do….

They _were_ the people she knew best in the Wizarding world. What that said about her, the girl who wanted to be good, she wasn't sure….

She imagined what it might be like to want to save everyone on the island, to stop Vance and his Leviathan, to restore the Inferi, if it were possible….

What might it feel like?

"YES. USE YOUR AMBITIOUS FEELINGS. LET THE PASSION FLOW THROUGH YOU."

Hermione's eyes were closed, but even through the barrier of her eyelids the brightening glow of the tesseract was visible—too bright—searing—

A loud screech like metal gears grinding together at high speeds jerked Hermione out of her reverie. The too-strong glow of the tesseract faded The black structure was changing, growing.

In fits and bursts it grew to thirty feet. The odd, senseless structure was transforming, something like two legs forming out of the black mass, and something else stretching behind it like a tail.

"What—" Hermione began to say, and the the whole island rocked from the force of the wave. She was stunned, falling, the ground a blur rushing up to meet her—_she had dropped Dragon_.

Then the water hit. To call it a tsunami would have been an understatement. The wave crashed across the island, sweeping aside the shambling, mindless Inferi—Hermione was underwater, being turned about in six directions at once; Remus was gone and so was Dragon. There was water in her mouth, in her nose, and it didn't seem half as important as the pressure squeezing her inside out—

Some invisible force pulled her out of the water. Spluttering and coughing, Hermione wiped water from her eyes and focused on the blurry image in front of her.

"I'd say this is about a six, Sirius," said Gilderoy.

"How is this not a bloody ten?" Sirius grumbled. "The damned black thing's awake."

"It's only an Endbringer, dear chap. We are SPEWW."

Gilderoy and Sirius were on brooms, hovering over the water that had submerged the island. Emmeline was slumped over behind Sirius, leaning on his back. Remus was on his own broom, still a wolf and looked as stunned as Hermione felt.

Gilderoy had his wand trained on Hermione, a Hover Charm. "Can't you fly? What happened to the tesseract?"

Hermione gestured wordlessly at the swirling torrents below.

"_Accio_ tesseract," Sirius said. After a stomach-lurching pause, the blue cube flew out of the water and into his hand. He tossed it to Hermione, who clutched it to her breast.

"Dragon!"

"WHOA. WIPEOUT."

"Dragon—"

"BOOTING UP."

Hermione breathed a sigh of relief as the familiar haze of shields and other spells washed over her. Gilderoy released the Hover Charm, and Hermione floated in the air under Dragon's power.

"Okay," Hermione said. "_What the darned heck is going on?_"

"Clockblock wore off and just in time," Sirius grunted. "Had about a minute to get in the air and start summoning before the waves started landing. Seems to have mixed badly with Remus's condition. We'll get that sorted out later."

Hermione pointed at the tall black humanoid monster, its long tail whipping across the water like an excited dog in a pool. "What is that?"

"Leviathan," Gilderoy said.

"LEVIATHAN."

"An old artifact."

"SO OLD."

"Why is it called an Endbringer?"

"SEE HOW THE ISLAND IS STILL THERE? OH, WAIT, NO. MY BAD."

Hermione took a deep breath. "We need Dumbledore."

"We don't," Gilderoy said. "We are SPEWW, and we do not need the help of wizards."

"You all are wizards!"

"We don't need the help of popular, cool wizards whom everybody likes. Myself excluded, naturally."

"Can we focus?" Sirius growled. "What's Vance's plan?"

"He said he was going to destroy Hogwarts," Hermione blurted.

"That's not it," Gilderoy mused. "Leviathan can't beat Hogwarts in a fight."

_"What?!"_

"Ministry," Emmeline whispered.

Sirius whipped around. "What?"

"Ministry. Lucius. Wants artifacts." Her eyes closed.

"Thank you, Emmeline," Gilderoy said crisply. "Vance's target is the Ministry of Magic, specifically the Department of Mysteries, where the artifacts are held. Let's go."

Hermione waved her hands helplessly at the black monster submerging beneath the water. "How are we supposed to stop a giant water-controlling monster than can sink an island in seconds?"

Hermione," Gilderoy said, slightly testy, "You have _magical powers._ Put them to some use, would you?"

* * *

Lucius Malfoy was awoken by the piercing scream of the precog artifact, the one alerted to danger before it happened, screaming at him through the Doormaker connecting the Department of Mysteries to his bedroom.

Two minutes later he was dressed in his finest robes, wand in hand, a broomstick in hand to take him out beyond the anti-Apparitation wards.

"Have fun," Narcissa called from the hall, rubbing her eyes sleepily.

"Of course, dear," Lucius said, opening the door. "Our nation's greatest treasures are under attack. I shall subdue these Death Eaters forthwith and be back in time for lunch."

* * *

Dumbledore was snoring gently at his extremely magical awesome desk when the a sound very much like an owl choking on a mouse while trying to hoot for aid suddenly woke him with a start. He fumbled for his magical glasses and Vanished the drool he had left on the back of his magical chair. Then, stumbling toward the magical fireplace, he took a pinch of Floo powder, cast it into the flames, and said, "Severus!"

The reply came back in a few seconds. "Yes, Headmaster?"

"An Endbringer seems to be on the move. Fetch Quirinus and meet me in my office, would you?"

"Yes, Headmaster. Headmaster?"

"Yes, Severus?"

"Is that an owl choking on a mouse while trying to hoot for aid in your office I hear?"

"No, Severus."

"Very well, Headmaster."

Dumbledore cut off the connection and returned to his desk. It would take them a couple of minutes to arrive, which he would use to wake up his Tattletale, as he affectionately called it. Even with an Endbringer on the move it paid to be enigmatically knowledgeable. Perhaps he would surprise Severus by mentioning what flavor toothpaste he used.


	9. Voyage with Vampires

"Dragon?"

"SPEAK, CHILD, AND I SHALL GRANT YOUR REQUEST."

"Keep yourself attached to me."

"YES, CHILD."

Hermione flew over the ocean toward Britain in the company of a werewolf, a sleeping granddaughter of a Dark Wizard whose body seemed to be mostly inhuman artifacts, a criminal escapee from Azkaban whom the world may or may not still consider responsible for betraying James and Lily Potter, and a Gilderoy Lockhart, who was enjoying it all far too much.

"We have learned some important lessons about plunging headfirst into a situation we hardly understand," he said, buzzing with energy.

"I though you had done this before," Hermione said.

"Some lessons we have to learn more than once."

"Do things normally go this badly?"

"This is a six."

"When have things gone worse than this?" Sirius said grumpily.

"I never said we'd seen a seven before."

Hermione was beginning to think too much of Gilderoy's personality had rubbed off on Dragon's. Leviathan was submerged beneath the ways and traveling as fast as their broomsticks, detectable only by the huge waves it left in its wake. The rain was like a hurricane, and even though Dragon kept her shielded Hermione still shivered like she was damp.

"What's going to happen when Leviathan reaches the Ministry?" Hermione chattered.

"There will be a long, protracted battle in which many wizards die and a great deal of property is destroyed," Gilderoy said happily. "If Vance wins, we may see the end of the Wizarding World."

"Shouldn't we warn someone?"

"They know," Sirius said. "Malfoy wouldn't let anything harm his precious artifacts."

"What about Dumbledore?"

"Dumbledore has an amazing way of deducing a great deal from very little," Gilderoy mused. "I am sure he is already planning to ruin my fun."

"It isn't a game! People could die, and it will be our fault!"

"Hermione, you are talking about a population consisting exclusively of people with magical powers. What could possibly go wrong?"

Hermione thought of Transfiguration and Professor Quirrell. "Lots of things could go wrong! What if Vance is smart? What about Voldemort—he killed lots of people! I'm going to tell Dragon to send a message to the Ministry and Dumbledore."

"I'd rather you didn't."

"This is too reckless, too stupid. I mean, you _actually_ let a twelve year-old girl fight a Dark Wizard, and the only reason you aren't all dead is because she did! This is so, so, so dumb I think Professor Quirrell would have an aneurism—Harry would divorce me—"

"We're alive and have Vance on the run, so everything went according to plan," Gilderoy snapped. "Don't focus on the details. See what's happening!"

"What's happening is Britain is going to be destroyed by a tsunami!"

"You've suffered a shock. Of course you're scared. Talk to the tesseract, shield yourself, and prepare for the battle ahead. I don't want to hear any of this childishness! Find the Hermione who tried to disarm me without a thought."

"Less thinking is not what we need right now."

"Aren't you a Gryffindor? Be shard will respond, and the tesseract will respond to your shard."

"I'm not a—" Oh. She was a Gryffindor, in this universe, wasn't she? Harry would be so upset. For that matter, she was pretty upset about it.

"Hermione," Gilderoy said, "have I ever told you the story of how I earned the Order of Merlin, Third Class?"

"No."

"It is a thrilling tale. I spent a year on a ship commanded by vampires, you see."

"HE WAS KIDNAPPED AND HELD AGAINST HIS WILL. THE WEAKLING."

"I was eleven years old. Vampires are nasty, terrible Dark creatures. I knew I had to slay them all."

"They didn't suck your blood? Also, wait, vampires on a boat? What?"

"Oh, they intended to suck my blood at first. But I spoke—I spoke! I told them stories, you see. They were quite taken with my bravado at how I challenged them—I was sorted into Gryffindor, of course, once my voyage with these vampires ended—and they decided they preferred my company to my rather limited stores of blood. I was skinny at eleven, you know, not like the man that you see before you today."

"Uh huh. Why did the vampires have a boat?"

"Why not? Vampires tend to be quite wealthy, and they enjoy the sun and relaxing voyage across the sea as much as anyone else."

"I thought vampires disintegrated in the sunlight."

"These wore sunscreen."

"And vampires can't cross running water."

"These were in a ship, and a ship may cross running water. What do you think happened, we reached any kind of crossing and simply spun in place?"

"This story is stupid."

"So I befriended this traveling group of vampires. Their chief, Vxaldimar, took me on as his apprentice. We sailed the eight seas—"

"You mean seven."

"Ah, but there is a magical sea—the eight seas, and I learned to hoist the masts and rig the…rigging, and to bail water out of the…water-holder, and—"

"You've never been on a ship in your life."

"Time casts its own Memory Charm. We were pirates! and I fought, robbed, and sucked blood with the best of them."

"You _what_?"

"In time I became the best of them. Vxaldimar offered me the hand of his daughter, Lilanda, and—"

"How old were you?"

"The cruel and beautiful Lilanda, and I would have done it. By that time I felt I was one of their own, you see, although I never received the bite." The wolf whined. "I apologize, dear Remus. Nevertheless, before we could be wed, Vxladimar decided on a mission most foul: we would kidnap and vampirify the daughter of the Minister for Magic himself!"

"It wasn't Fudge, was it?"

"No, this was Leach. I led the attack, of course, a cutlass between my teeth and a wand in each hand. We successfully broke into Leach's home and took his daughter. Aurors complicated things, as they tend to do, and Leach's daughter, Rose, and I were split off from the vampires. While we fled the Aurors, I fell in love with Rose, who was a good deal easier on the eyes than her father. She fell in love with me as well, and together we returned to the ship, not to become vampires, but to put an end to their scourge."

"This is ridiculous."

"Vxaldimar and Lilanda greeted me ecstatically, of course, and the wedding might have happened right then, had I not blasted Vxaldimar between the eyes with a Searing Light Hex."

"You were that strong that young?"

"I have always been very connected to my shard. So we defeated the vampires together, Rose and I, and for my services to Wizarding Britain, I was granted the Order of Merlin, Third Class, when I was but twelve years old."

"This story makes no sense."

"Yes, well, I did leave out the most interesting parts, such as how I learned to cast spells at three caster levels higher than the Rules as Written say."

Hermione decided not to touch that one. "So what happened to you and Rose?"

"Who? Oh, yes, Rose. Well, she was a student at Hogwarts too, and we had many more adventures together before a troll bit her legs off. Well, that was that for dear Rose."

"She was eaten by a troll?" Hermione gasped.

"Merely her legs. I slew the troll, of course, but it was too late for dear Rose. And so I swore to dedicate my life to battling evil everywhere."

Hermione turned to look at Sirius. "Is any of that true?"

Sirius grinned. "You really want to ask the guy who claims to have just walked out of Azkaban, wand in hand?"

"They let you keep your wand in Azkaban?"

"I ordered one from Ollivanders' before I left. Owls will fly places wizards won't."

"You had money?"

"The wand chooses the wizard, Hermione. Ollivander respects that."

Hermione faced forward. "You two are ridiculous."

Britain approached. The water swelled in front of them, a tidal wave. Leviathan was rising.

"IMPACT IN TWO MINUTES," Dragon said. "PREPARE FOR BATTLE."

* * *

Lucius barked orders to Aurors. Hurricane-level rainfall and wind didn't do much to impair wizards. More concerning was the black column rising out of the water. Leviathan's tail. Who had activated it…?

No time to worry about that right now. He needed to decide which, if any artifacts to bring out, and who should use them. If the Endbringer was fully activated, there was no beating it, only driving it off. What was it after? It couldn't be the artifacts, because the precogs couldn't predict Leviathan. That meant a person was after them. The same as the one behind Leviathan? If they could take him out, maybe Leviathan could be deactivated.

"Planning to deactivate Leviathan by defeating the Dark Wizard behind it all?" a too-familiar voice said.

Lucius didn't turn around. No need to let the old lunatic know how much he spooked him. "No, Albus, the precog might have been alerted to someone unrelated to this attack."

"Oh, you don't believe that," Albus said cheerfully. "What artifacts have you—excuse me, has the Wizengamot decided to unleash?"

_Go away_. "Thinker artifacts. We simply need to find the wizard behind this and defeat him."

"And deal with a terrible Endbringer at the same time. Would you like some help?"

"The Ministry can handle this."

Albus walked past Lucius, waving his wand in a jaunty manner. "If you say so. Then I shall trust the Ministry to clean up this nasty rain and have my lunch with the Contessa as scheduled."

Lucius ground his teeth as Albus strolled away, whistling merrily. He would solve this problem without any help from Hogwarts.

"You!" he snapped at a Ministry official bustling past. "Listen. Contact Vernon Dursley. Ask him if he wouldn't mind taking out the Giga Drill one last time."


	10. The Belly of the Beast

There was a knock at the door. After a couple of tries Vernon Dursley managed to heave himself up from the breakfast table, where he and his wife, Petunia, and their son, Dudley, had been enjoying heaps of fried bacon, fried egg, and fried sausage. He looked through the peephole and saw a man in a pointy hat and robes.

"Bloody hell, I thought I was done with you people," Vernon growled as he opened the door. "Did the boy get expelled?" His eyes gleamed hopefully.

The wizard swept a bow, causing Vernon a moment of panic. What if the neighbors saw…? Against his better judgment and certainly taste, he grabbed the wizard and dragged him inside, shutting the door and locking it. After looking through the curtains to make sure no one was watching, Vernon faced the wizard.

"I don't want him back, you hear? Keep him at a wizard orphanage. Surely you lot have one of those."

The wizard swept a bow, slightly flustered. "Forgive me, Master Dursley, for this sudden intrusion. No, I do not bring news of the glorious Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, although allow me to reiterate the Ministry's unique pleasure that so illustrious a boy should be raised by none other than Vernon and Petunia Dursley, Lords of the Spiral—"

"Spit it out! You're getting my carpet dirty."

"Ah—yes, I apologize. Leviathan has attacked."

Petunia and Dudley were looking at them curiously.

"Dudley, go to your room," Vernon ordered.

"But Daddy—"

"Now! Do as I say!"

Grumbling, Dudley took a last handful of sausage and tottered off to his room. Vernon waiting until he heard the door slam shut, then he rounded on the wizard.

"An _Endbringer_? I thought we killed them all!"

"Merely deactivated—"

"Your Ministry is supposed to be taking care of this!"

"We—we are, but—"

"You need my help?"

The wizard nodded meekly. A vein in Vernon's temple throbbed. How he hated wizards. He was happy to let Leviathan drown them all, and indeed he had intended to do so when he had first unearthed the Giga Drill. But then Lucius Malfoy had explained to him that his own property would be damaged by the Endbringers as well.

No one threatened Vernon Dursley's property and got away with it—and the Endbringers hadn't.

"The rain will reach here shortly," the wizard said nervously.

"All right, all right," Vernon snapped. "I'll go get my Giga Drill. But your Ministry owes me a favor!"

"Dear?" Petunia said, getting up from the table, looked worried.

Vernon took her in his arms. "I must go and save Britain. Wait for me here."

"I love you," she said.

"I love you too."

They kissed. Then Vernon went to the garage where the Core Drill waited.

Vernon hated the damned thing. He had unearthed it by accident while remodeling the backyard of his house. The thing glowed green, and he had called the authorities to report a radioactive substance. Instead of technicians in Hazmat suits, robed people with wands had arrived.

"Congratulations," one said, shaking his hands. "You've been chosen by the Spiral Energy."

That was when Vernon's life had fallen to pieces. He learned about magic, the Endbringers, and of course the Giga Drill. When Leviathan had attacked, the damned thing had responded….

Vernon was vaguely aware that he was considered some kind of hero in Wizarding society. He had thought to marry Petunia Evans, the most normal woman on earth, only to learn she was the sister of the martyred witch Lily Evans and aunt of her son, Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived and savior of the Wizarding world. Taking Harry Potter under their roof at the request of that insane old man, Dundersnore or whatever his name was, only made things worse.

Now the Endbringers were back. Vernon's hand closed around the tiny Core Drill.

"I hate you," he said. Then he went back to the wizard, who Apparated them away.

* * *

Lucius Malfoy turned at the crack of Disapparition.

"Vernon Dursley," he said, bowing. "A pleasure."

"Lucius," Vernon grunted, holding out his hand stiffly. After a pause, Lucius shook it. "So what's going on?"

"Leviathan's impact was thirty seconds ago," Lucius said. "We are holding him off for now, but we need all the help we can get."

"What about that, uh, Durblesore? I thought he was the best of you lot."

"...He is entertaining an Italian noble, I believe. Will you—?"

"Yes, of course I'll help. Can't let that ruddy Leviathan ruin my house. We just repainted the interior."

Lucius nodded politely, unsure of what paint was. "There are Aurors just outside who will shield and ward you. We have Thinker artifacts working on the location of the Dark Wizard responsible."

"And? Where is he?"

"They…don't seem to be able to find him."

"I thought your artifacts were unbeatable."

"Yes…well, an artifact must be interfering somehow."

"Or an Endbringer. Your Thinker stuff is useless on them, right?"

"That…is possible." _The Simurgh?_

"Well, let's get this over with." His fists clenched, Vernon marched outside. Lucius watched him go.

For a blood purist and wizard supremacist, Lucius got along with Vernon surprisingly well. Maybe it was the way that Vernon hated wizards as much as Lucius hated Muggles. There was a kind of respect there.

And there was the fact that the Spiral Energy had chosen _him_, of all people. Lucius would have gladly killed Vernon and taken the Core Drill for himself, but the Core Drill wouldn't have worked for him, not after it had chosen. And they needed Vernon. The way he fought…it was almost like the Core Drill was made to battle Endbringers.

The ground shuddered; Lucius stumbled and caught himself. The Endbringer had already penetrated the first layer of shields. Vernon had come just in time.

Out at the end of the dock, Vernon looked up at the black amorphous thing, nothing more than black lines shifting and swirling around itself like a negative spiral. Except for one long waving black strand as thick as a building. The tail.

The Core Drill had changed in the years since Voldemort's defeat and the retreat of the Endbringers. Now there was something new in addition to the Giga Drill.

"Gurren Lagann!" Vernon cried, holding the Core Drill aloft. "My armor!"

* * *

"We're entering the no-fly zone," Gilderoy warned.

The winds and rain buffeted them. Hermione had never wondered what it felt like to be caught in a hurricane, and now she wished she had never known. While their magic shielded them from the water, their brooms were helpless against the raging storm. It tossed them about, and their efforts to pierce closer to Leviathan were shrugged off by the raging winds.

"So what do we do?" Hermione shouted. Gilderoy's radio magic made it unnecessary, but she couldn't hear _herself_.

"I thought I would ask you. What can the tesseract do?"

"It…it said something about the Eidolon Command."

"Good. Do that."

"I don't know how!"

"So ask it! Stop fighting your shard!"

Hermione brought her hand to the pocket that held the tesseract and felt it pulse.

"Dragon? What…."

Hermione looked at her pocket. It was glowing.

"It's reacting to something," Hermione said. "There's something like Dragon out there!"

* * *

The thing Vernon hated most about the Gurren Lagann upgrade was that it talked.

"Hey, bro!" the overly masculine voice said. "Get ready to rock! We're going to take this Endbringer down!"

"Shut up," Vernon said as the armor formed around him in a colorful display.

"Don't believe in me! Don't believe in yourself! Believe in the—"

"Shut up!"

The Core Drill was powered by feelings. The…Spiral Energy, or whatever, reacted to Vernon's confidence and drive to win. And there was nothing Vernon felt he was innately better than and wanted to defeat more than all things magical and exciting. Perhaps it was inevitable that the Core Drill would power up by talking to him.

"Whoa, that's a big one. All right, Vernon, let's roll!"

Vernon activated the thrusters. They sent him rocketing out into the air, plunging through rain and wind toward the mass of blackness. He hefted the Giga Drill in his armored hand and plunged down, cutting—no, drilling through the layers of shields.

It wasn't enough. The Endbringers were too tough.

"Bro, you still have doubts. Remember, your drill is the drill that will pierce the—"

"Shut up!"

* * *

Hermione stared as deep amidst the black and clouds of rain a burst of green light appeared.

"The Killing Curse?" she said wildly. "Does that work on Endbringers?"

"NOT THE KILLING CURSE. SPIRAL ENERGY."

"Dragon! What's that?"

"SOMETHING WE DON'T LIKE. GET CLOSER AND USE THE EIDOLON COMMAND."

"I can't get closer. Can you Apparate us in?"

"YES."

There was a crack—and Hermione was nose-to-…thing with the blackness.

It was surprisingly calm, yet everything around them was a tempest.

"THE EYE OF THE STORM."

"Did…did you just teleport us right next to Leviathan?"

"GOOD AIM, RIGHT? NOW USE THE EIDOLON COMMAND."

"The others—"

"USELESS. DIDN'T BRING THEM. THE EIDOLON COMMAND."

Hermione pointed her trembling wand and said, "_Opus Testa_."

Nothing happened.

"YOU NEED EMOTIONAL CONTENT. DO NOT THINK, FEEL. IT IS LIKE A WAND POINTING TO AN ENDBRINGER. DO NOT FOCUS ON THE WAND, OR YOU WILL MISS ALL OF THE TERRIBLE DESTRUCTION."

Hermione focused herself. "_Opus Testa_."

There was a flash of bright green light, and something whirred by her incredibly fast, followed by a distant cry of "What the ruddy hell?"

Then Leviathan began to groan.

"What's happening?"

"A CONTEST OF WILLS. WE MUST GO INSIDE. INSIDE THERE IS VANCE."

"H-How do I do that?"

"SAME WAY HE DID. REMEMBER? TOUCH IT."

"That black thing—"

"YES."

Hermione placed her hand against the most solid portion of Leviathan. When she drew her hand away, some of the black mass came with it.

"OPEN IT."

Hermione steeled herself and pushed. Leviathan folded back and opened up.

"ENTER."

Hermione floated to the entrance and stepped inside.

Leviathan was at least thirty feet tall, but that was nothing compared to how big it was on the _inside_. It was almost like a miniature Hogwarts in a goth mood, black staircases running everywhere, doors where there shouldn't be and walls where there should be doors.

The crack of Disapparition behind her.

"It's dangerous," Hermione said.

"Less so thanks to you," Gilderoy said, peering curiously around. "How fascinating."

Remus growled. Beside him, with Emmeline propped up on his shoulder, Sirius looked nervous. "Are we inside the bloody thing?" He looked at Hermione's hand with dawning horror. Hermione followed his gaze. The black stuff was still around her left hand. Most of the index finger was covered in it.

"_Avada Kedavra_!"

Remus was faster than any of them, bowling Gilderoy over before the jet of green light was halfway to its mark. Hermione caught a glimpse of Vance disappearing up one of the disjointed staircases. Leviathan shuddered as it began to move again. Somehow the storm outside seemed to intensify, as if this wasn't even Leviathan's final form.

"Hermione," Gilderoy said, dusting himself off, "Remus, Sirius and I will handle Vance. Take Emmeline. She may know something useful."

Sirius handed Emmeline awkwardly over to Hermione, who caught her with a grunt.

"Dragon—"

It was already levitating her. Hermione wasn't sure if it was a good sign that Dragon was anticipating her orders.

"Come," Gilderoy said, and Apparated up to one of the staircases above. Sirius grabbed Remus and followed.

"Wait!" Hermione said. "Where do I go?"

"The Control Room, obviously!" Gilderoy said, and disappeared through one of the doors.

Hermione nodded to herself. "Dragon?"

"CHILD."

"Am I controlling Leviathan, is Vance, or are you?"

"YES."

"Fine," Hermione said. "We can sort this out later. Now we are in the belly of the beast. Take me to the Control Room."


End file.
